Iowa construction industry challenged by worker shortage

(The Center Square) – Job vacancies in the construction industry have less to do with the COVID-19 pandemic than they do with competition for mechanically minded workers, Iowa trade association representatives say.

The construction industry competes with agriculture and manufacturing for those who like to work with their hands, Ben Hammes, director of public affairs for the Master Builders of Iowa, told The Center Square.

“That’s a shortage that we don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to overcome,” Hammes said.

The construction industry was impacted by the coronavirus to some degree, but less compared to other industries, he said.

Since much of the work is outside and workers already were equipped with some personal protection equipment, in some ways the construction industry came out of the pandemic in a better situation than other industries, Hammes said.

But the construction industry continues to struggle with filling positions. Job openings companies struggle to fill are primarily in the trades, including foreman, electrician, carpenter, superintendent, safety officer, sheet metalworker and surveyor, to name a few, Hammes said.

“What’s creating more of a short-term problem, at least in our industry, are the surging material prices and the unstable markets that we’ve seen over the last few years,” Hammes said. “Material prices are starting to come down, which is good.”

The Master Builders of Iowa focuses a lot of its efforts to get in front of kids at an earlier age. Even high school may be too late to interest them in checking out career possibilities outside of going to college.

Master Builders of Iowa created its Build Iowa resource website to educate Iowans on a career in construction, which enables parents and students to connect with a contractor and offers other resources to enter a career path or find jobs.

The jobs are rewarding and don’t require debt, Hammes said.

“We’re not discounting a four-year education or discounting a community college program or anything,” Hammes said.

The Master Builders of Iowa has a full-time workforce manager to connect schools directly with employers. The organization invested in a virtual reality program that enables them to go into a classroom and put headsets on 25 different students to walk through different jobs.

“This is an industry where people can rise up into the ranks of the company without necessarily having advanced education degrees,” Scott Newhard, VP for public affairs for Associated General Contractors of Iowa, told The Center Square.

Associated General Contractors represents the heavy highway segment of the construction industry.

While he’s a proponent of formal higher education, Newhard said it’s no guarantee for a successful income and lifestyle. It is possible to start a career in construction out of high school and within a few years own your own house and enter the middle-class lifestyle while contemporaries are struggling to pay off college loan debt, he said.

“When COVID hit, a lot of schools decided well, if they were going to have kids out of the building, then they were going to speed up the construction project. And so we saw a lot of activity on that side,” Hammes said.

Contractors working in the government sector are trying to fill out their schedules through competitive bidding to keep their workers employed, Newhard said. But they have too small a workforce now to bid on other work.

“So a lot of contractors are having to scale down into a size that allows them to have a workforce that can support that size,” he said.

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