Home Construction Hurt by Labor Shortage and High Material Prices, Diversity Recruiting Can Help

The building of single-family homes and home remodeling was projected to see growth in 2021 due to high demand. However, despite high demand and a shortage of homes for sale, single-family housing actually dropped more than 13% in April compared to March according to a CNBC article.

This is attributed to the rise in cost and disruption to supply chains for building materials such as lumber, steel, and copper but also due to a shortage of skilled labor. The AGC 2021 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook Report shows that 84% of contractors report one of their top concerns for 2021 are supply chains and workers. With 54% reporting difficulty finding qualified workers and 49% expecting it to get harder, or remain as hard, to find them.

Despite large amounts of available workers in the economy, few of the newly unemployed have construction experience and many aren’t considering a job in construction, despite the ability to earn high wages (around $68,000 for entry-level construction managers versus $48,000 for all college graduates in 2016). To overcome this, AGC is launching a new national workforce recruiting effort, “Construction is Essential,” that will use targeted digital advertisement as a strategy to attract a new generation of workers into high-paying construction careers.

Youth today are digital natives that grew up with technology/social media and interact with digital platforms easily. For this reason, digital diversity job boards, such as ConstructionTrabajos.com, can be used as an outreach tool for recruiters. In addition, ConstructionTrabajos.com has a community of followers on social media that can be reached when posting jobs on the platform. With Forbes reporting that 30.7% of construction professionals are Hispanic or Latino, this reinforces the notion that Hispanics are the backbone of the construction industry and the younger demographic makes them a good fit to work in the industry for years to come.

Update: An earlier version of this article appeared on HispanicConstructionJobs.com on June 23, 2023 prior to the rebranding of the website to the current name, ConstructionTrabajos.com in 2025. All links and mentions to the previous website have been updated with the new website link and name.