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When will our nation invest the resources required to rebuild its construction workforce? Our ability to build and maintain our infrastructure system, once the best in the world, has eroded. We are still a world leader in developing technological innovations, but the workforce required to build the build, operate, and maintain the facilities to support those innovations across their lifecycle is absent. The United States’ workforce development system is in need of expansion and renewal.  This system includes the recruitment, training, placement and retention of individuals in gainful employment opportunities. Over the past three decades, we have seen a construction workforce shortage emerge. The shortage has worsened to the point that it is not only difficult to find quality craft professionals, but the shortage is impacting projects’ schedule, cost, and safety. As a nation, we have a wealth of resources that can be used to reverse these trends. If we choose to do nothing, the shortage of craft professionals will get worse and likely accelerate in the next decade due to an aging construction workforce.

Revitalizing our nation’s workforce development system is the path forward toward addressing not only the shortage of construction craft workers but the nation’s shortage among many technical industries. This effort will require new approaches in how we communicate career opportunities to youth in secondary and post-secondary education, work-based training, and other initiatives. This research formulated a series of policy recommendations that we collectively can advocate for to impact industry stakeholders and governmental agencies. Considering the relative benefits and costs of each recommendation, there are policies we can implement in the short term (less than three years), while others will require longer sustained effort.

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Minooei, Farzad (2018). “Towards a Deeper Understanding of the U.S. Workforce Development System in the Construction Industry.” Civil Engineering Graduate Theses & Dissertations. 343. University of Colorado at Boulder.