The Census recently released their housing permit report so let’s take a look:
From the chart, we can see an upswing in new housing units started in the United States but how does our thesis about demographics and labor tie in? Let’s have a look from BuilderOnline.com:
According to the Spring 2023 HBI Construction Labor Market Report, the construction industry needs to add approximately 723,000 new workers each year to meet demand and help combat the nation’s estimated 1.5 million home shortage.
A parallel problem to the construction industry’s recruitment challenges is the aging existing construction workforce. According to the HBI, the median age of workers in construction is 42. However, the share of construction workers ages 25 to 54 decreased from 72% in 2015 to 67.7% in 2021. Workers 55 or older account for 22.3% of the construction workforce, while workers younger than 25 comprise just 10% of the construction industry.
Source: BuilderOnliine.com
The article above outlines that the media age of construction workers today is 42 and about a fourth of workers are over the age of 55 which means in 10 years at least 25% of the trades people will retire and enroll in social security and the the remaining 50% will be much older.
In recent post, we noted that Colleges & Universities are in a death spiral because there aren’t enough young people graduating high school and entering the college educational system so if there aren’t enough students why would there be enough construction & trades workers?
Keep in mind that this is just one industry, construction, and there are plenty of other industries that will suffer similar fates. There will be away to profit from these upcoming changes and we’re looking for it so stay tuned, stay profitable and stay solvent…