Wake Up, America! Wake Up! PLEASE!!
- Thread starter Drillher4me
- Start date
- Status
let me see if I can summarize your whole afternoon
you post a lie and get caught at......
then you try to change the subject.....and post more lies to distract from the first subject
get caught lying on the second subject
and spent several paragraphs crying about it
I would say that pretty much sums it up
no life like the low life is there?
you post a lie and get caught at......
then you try to change the subject.....and post more lies to distract from the first subject
get caught lying on the second subject
and spent several paragraphs crying about it
I would say that pretty much sums it up
no life like the low life is there?
.....DELIVERY????? is that the same as Maternity Benefits?
Never in my days have I heard Maternity called DELIVERY in a health; plan. Now THAT'S funny......Nope, still not falling for it. Your EMPLOYER may have limited you to this plan, but those are not all the plans available to YOU ... and as I said in an earlier post to you, the reason you don't have access to anything OTHER THAN the Bronze plan is because either YOU, Your EMPLlOYER, or your conservative STATE GOVERNMENT arranged it that way.
.....Also, you hint that YOU have to pay the enormous premiums .... AGAIN ... if this is your GROUP health benefits, your employer pays something towards your premiums, otherwise, I don't know an insurance company in the system who would issue a group contract under a "100% Employee Pay All" plan. If THAT was the case, I imagine your company has about a 20-25% employee participation in the group plan, IF that. Normally an employer pays YOUR portion, but you pay your family/spouse portion, AND ... your premiums are pre-taxed off your paycheck giving you at least a 30-40% reduction from your st-fed-fica tax contributions. So, unless your employer simply doesn't sponsor a employer provided health plan, you're having to purchase an individual policy ... again very rare unless your employer is just a cheap *******-of-a-bitch.
.....So, H-H ... your beef is not with Obama, or the ACA, its with the cheap ass SOBs who provide you no help with group benefits. No one can help you with that except You, because your solution is to find an employer who appreciates your work for them. The PLANS are there, you refuse to admit who's at fault for not making them available.
Here ya go ... cake for your "Pity Party" ....
.....And, you forget the benefits of a "No Pre-existing - Guarantee Health Contract" ... again, something the health insurance industry now has to provide. Companies no longer are "cherry picked" as good risk by elimination of unfavorable industries, unhealthy employees & dependents. Had the Republicans allowed EVERYONE to enroll, the healthiest of insureds would have helped offset the highest risk insured. Also, the so-called TAX you keep bringing up, was going directly BACK INTO THE SYSTEM ... unlike SS excess taxes which were being spent on other government expenditures to OFFSET the adverse selection of those health people electing to pay the tax instead of the premium, and then going to the emergency rooms for their FREE insurance benefits when they needed it.
.....Face it, your conservative party HAD NO PLAN, HAD NO DESIRE to allow a health plan come to fruitation ... their aim was to keep down the cost of another TRICKLE DOWN TAX CUT for the wealthiest & corporations, PERIOD! But, that's not what they told YOU, was it? No, they promised to provide a better, less costly health insurance plan for EVERYONE who wanted it. Just one of the many, many lies the so-called conservatives delivered to their constituents that THEY VALUED most!
Last edited:
you started this on page 47
and posted your first lie on post 932
I corrected you on post 937
you switched topics on post939
and on post 944 you compounded your second lie with false links and more lies
all of page 48 you spent crying about being caught lying
and are still going on with the lies and the crying it must be a republican trait or something
I am about ready to just block you and end all of your insanity
there is just no end to your stupidity
and posted your first lie on post 932
I corrected you on post 937
you switched topics on post939
and on post 944 you compounded your second lie with false links and more lies
all of page 48 you spent crying about being caught lying
and are still going on with the lies and the crying it must be a republican trait or something
I am about ready to just block you and end all of your insanity
there is just no end to your stupidity
.... Now THAT is funny ... the POT calling the kettle black .... you're a riot, nongolfer.
- If HH declines his employers plan, then Obummer Care gives you a big fat ZERO in help. i.e. HH would have to pay full price for any other plan outside his employer. Surly you know this. I've told you several times the reason I don't qualify for reduced premiums is for the sole reason that my wife has insurance through her employer, and I am self employed. Now think - imagine a person unemployed but his wife works and has insurance through her employer. Her husband won't be able to get insurance from the exchange for that reason alone and will have to pay FULL PRICE for insurance regardless of their combined income even being unemployed. - Did you read the ACA bill? There is so much more to it than just insurance cost.
Last edited:
nongolfer
Male
Post on page 47 is factually accurate.
Your post 937 contains no substance, only your misguided opinion. I rebutted your opinion with a factually accurate post, which you ignored. Proably becuase you can't comprehend it. In addition to being dishonest, it's pretty clear you aren't very bright.
My post 939 links a post of your which has be proven to be a lie.
My post 944 contains links which proves my post 939.
On page 48 I'm just pointing out the obvious. You are dishonest.
Go ahead and block me. And go ahead and keep posting today from your job, on your employer's time. You are probably smarter than him too. That's why he is your boss, and you are the employee. Screw him, he's probably a conservative.
Yes, Democrats Should Talk About Impeaching Trump
Kevin Mack,The Daily Beast
There has never been a president as corrupt and dangerous to our democracy as Donald Trump. Democrats—with more than 77 percent of the party’s voters supporting impeachment—can use this to their advantage by listening to the Democratic base leading up to the midterms.
In an election year that is going to come down to energizing the base of the party, talking about impeachment is not just politically smart for Democrats, it’s the morally right thing to do. That doesn’t mean Democrats should avoid talking about policy issues that matter deeply to the electorate. It means standing up for what’s right and recognizing the reality of the moment. The disdain among Americans for this president’s corruption and criminal behavior is only matched in the country’s history by the public dislike for President Richard Nixon before he resigned from office.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/64e8735f-600e-3162-909c-e2b303036d9a/yes,-democrats-should-talk.html
Kevin Mack,The Daily BeastThere has never been a president as corrupt and dangerous to our democracy as Donald Trump. Democrats—with more than 77 percent of the party’s voters supporting impeachment—can use this to their advantage by listening to the Democratic base leading up to the midterms.
In an election year that is going to come down to energizing the base of the party, talking about impeachment is not just politically smart for Democrats, it’s the morally right thing to do. That doesn’t mean Democrats should avoid talking about policy issues that matter deeply to the electorate. It means standing up for what’s right and recognizing the reality of the moment. The disdain among Americans for this president’s corruption and criminal behavior is only matched in the country’s history by the public dislike for President Richard Nixon before he resigned from office.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/64e8735f-600e-3162-909c-e2b303036d9a/yes,-democrats-should-talk.html
Seriously???? Here it is, straight from a benefits table from blue cross blue shield in YOUR state......DELIVERY????? is that the same as Maternity Benefits?Never in my days have I heard Maternity called DELIVERY in a health; plan. Now THAT'S funny.
https://www.bluecrossnc.com/sites/d...ublic/pdf/sbc/Blue_Value_Bronze_6650_2018.pdf
And here it is from bcbs in Kansas
https://www.bcbsks.com/HealthPlans/pdf/SBC/2018/EPOSimpleBronzeHDHP(2018).pdf
And here it is from yet another company in Kansas
https://www.bolgerapps.com/medica_sb7/usum/output_cache/1111-99765-2018081509203557035-final.pdf
All these links were found with a simple search on the Obummercare website.
So now you've shown you:
- didn't know plans with no office visit coverage until fulfilling your deductible existed
- didn't know ACA plans existed that were not HDHPs
- didn't know the word delivery was commonly used in insurance coverage tables
This begs the question.....what is your real job? The idea you are an insurance professional is straining credulity.
nongolfer
Male
2013:
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/government-security-clearance-list-100195
Outrage: ON AGAIN / off again
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/government-security-clearance-list-100195
Outrage: ON AGAIN / off again
D
Deleted125623
Guest
Where Are All the Builders?
Construction costs are climbing and production is lagging, in part because there aren't enough workers to go around.
By Andrew Soergel Senior ReporterJune 15, 2018, at 6:00 a.m.
Where Are All the Builders?
More
Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
The United States has a building problem.
The country that paved one of the most expansive highway and transportation systems on the planet, that festooned a riverside between Maryland and Virginia with ornate marble and sandstone statues, columns and monuments in the creation of the nation's capital, that introduced architectural marvels to the world ranging from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Empire State Building to the Space Needle, is now dogged by an ailing construction industry.
[
READ:
Fed Signals Future Rate Hikes as Inflation Accelerates ]
A common thread has waylaid the building of a much-anticipated senior community in Oro Valley, Arizona, ****** Exxon Mobil to retool the construction of what would be the world's largest ethylene plant in San Patricio County, Texas, and spurred Home Depot into investing $50 million into skills training programs over the next 10 years: there simply aren't enough construction workers to keep up with demand.
"For better or worse, business is good for us. They're beating down the door," says Tyson Conrad, the president and founder of Tampa-based Goliath Construction Consulting, which serves as a national recruiting and consultation outfit geared specifically toward the construction sector. "We're in a place now where you have a booming economy and booming construction industry and lack of manpower. So people have gotten creative and desperate, essentially."
Conrad works with clients across the country, many of whom seem to be telling the same story. With the economy chugging along through what is now its second-longest recovery to date and with demand for more affordable housing options as high as it's been in years, Americans' desire for new homes, buildings and facilities is through the roof.
But there simply aren't enough skilled builders around to complete the work. Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That average was eclipsed in only one year going back to 2000, when the BLS first began tracking the data – and that year was 2007, at the tail end of the U.S. housing boom.
The labor shortage is so acute that 91 percent of more than 2,700 contractors, construction managers, builders and trade contractors surveyed in the latest Commercial Construction Index reported having a difficult or moderately difficult time finding skilled workers.
"Among the contractors expressing concern about worker skill levels, more than one-third (37 percent) believe the problem has worsened in the last six months, and almost half (47 percent) believe it will continue to worsen in the next six months," according to the report.
That shortage hasn't been a terrible thing for those already in the industry, as their pay has skyrocketed in tandem with their demand. Wages of production and nonsupervisory construction employees – which excludes managers, sales personnel and accounting staff associated with the industry – climbed 3.6 percent between May 2017 and May 2018. That's comfortably larger than the 2.8 percent wage gain production and nonsupervisory employees across the economy enjoyed over the same window.
A recent blog post from Aaron Terrazas, an economic research director at Zillow, identified even more drastic gains among residential construction workers, in particular. Such employees closed out April with a 5 percent annual wage gain, nearly double the 2.9 percent uptick for all of the economy's private-sector workers.
"These days they're making a killing," Conrad says, telling the story of a client's ******* who at 23 years old is making around $75,000 annually as a foreman. "For so long, it was seen that if you worked with a hard hat, you didn't make a lot of money and you were a dummy. I can tell you that is contrary to everything that is reality."
[
READ:
What the Price of Oil Says About the Economy ]
Construction wage growth isn't necessarily expected to be exponential – the BLS last year estimated the top 10 percent of construction workers earned an annual wage of roughly $63,000, with top-tier construction managers bringing in nearly $160,000. But Conrad says demand for workers has created attractive options in the industry, particularly for young workers as the more established individuals phase out of the workforce.
Those in the construction industry are, on average, slightly older than workers in the rest of the economy, with a median age of 42.6. Only 1.8 percent of the industry's workers are between 16 and 19 years old, while fewer than 9.4 percent are younger than 25. Both percentages are shy of national averages for all industries, suggesting a larger-than-normal share of construction workers are on the older side.
Conrad says he's concerned by the fact that young people don't seem to be embracing the industry in the same way that they used to. He partly blames budget cuts to shop and skills development opportunities in high schools while also pointing out the negative stigma he believes trade professions developed over time.
"There was a huge push in the '90s and even in the early 2000s that if you were going to be successful, you needed to go to college. And that was the only way. And you add to that the Baby Boomers all migrating out of the workforce now – you've got a trifecta of major issues," he says. "You have few people going in, a lot of people going out."
He also points to a downtick in immigration as a driving factor in the skilled construction worker shortage. A recent industry analysis spearheaded by Natalia Siniavskaia, the assistant vice president of housing policy research at the National Association of Home Builders, found that immigrants constitute roughly 30 percent of the construction industry. In states such as California and Texas, that share sits north of 40 percent.
"Over the last two administrations, the last one and this one, we've seen significant drops in undocumented workers coming into the country," Conrad says, noting that this trend has in some cases left construction employers in a bind.
In order to solve the construction shortage with domestic workers, officials and educators throughout the country have made efforts to get students more excited and more involved in working with their hands, hoping to foster a new generation of builders to help address today's shortfall.
"I think there was a mentality here for awhile that we had to send our ******* to college," says David Curry, director of career and technical education at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "We want our students to find success. For certain students, that doesn't mean sitting in a classroom for four more years."
At the Milton Hershey School, Curry stresses a "learning by doing" approach that allows students to get hands-on experience in their field of choice. The institution – founded in 1909 as the Hershey Industrial School by chocolatier Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine – functions as a boarding school catering specifically to low-income students. It offers traditional academic coursework as well as specialized training in one of 11 career pathways for more senior students.
For students in the school's construction and carpentry pathway, that means personally building houses in the nearby community from the ground up.
"At the start of their junior year, the house was nonexistent. It was a patch of dirt. They have been involved in every phase of the building of this house," Curry says, noting that this year's crop of seniors just finished the 52nd home Milton Hershey students have constructed in the area. "In their junior class, they came out and built the rafters and walled it and roofed it. They've spent most of their senior year working on the interior of the house. They work alongside our instructional trade professionals we have here at the school."
Curry says the school has experienced staff members on hand to help guide the students, though it will occasionally reach out to trade workers in the community to fill gaps in their expertise. He says the school doesn't have a painter on hand, for example, so that work will be subcontracted.
"The entire goal of this is not for our staff to build this house. At the end of the day, it's the ******* who are building the house," Curry says. "Obviously, ******* make mistakes at times, and it becomes a learning experience. But we're not going to hand a house to a family and not have it be what it's supposed to be."
[
PHOTOS:
The Big Picture – May 2018 ]
Four graduating seniors plan to enroll in a local technical school to continue their skills development, though Curry says interest in the construction and carpentry program is rising. Two freshmen signed up for the concentration last year, he said, while 17 jumped into it this year.
The school is relatively unique in the fact that it is supported in part by a significant endowment that was left behind after Milton Hershey's death – so it can afford the equipment and tools necessary for students to gain such hands-on experience. But Curry says he hopes other schools are able to increase awareness of and support for trade and construction programs going forward. The jobs, he says, are certainly available.
"There's a huge growth in opportunities nationally in trade areas," Curry says. "Oftentimes these are ******* that know they want to do that and they want to go directly into that field, either to a two-year school or directly to work. … This is designed to make sure they're prepared for what they'll see in the real world."
Andrew Soergel, Senior Reporter
Andrew Soergel is a Senior Reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow ... Read more
Tags: economy, employment
Construction costs are climbing and production is lagging, in part because there aren't enough workers to go around.
By Andrew Soergel Senior ReporterJune 15, 2018, at 6:00 a.m.
Where Are All the Builders?
More
Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
The United States has a building problem.
The country that paved one of the most expansive highway and transportation systems on the planet, that festooned a riverside between Maryland and Virginia with ornate marble and sandstone statues, columns and monuments in the creation of the nation's capital, that introduced architectural marvels to the world ranging from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Empire State Building to the Space Needle, is now dogged by an ailing construction industry.
[
READ:
Fed Signals Future Rate Hikes as Inflation Accelerates ]
A common thread has waylaid the building of a much-anticipated senior community in Oro Valley, Arizona, ****** Exxon Mobil to retool the construction of what would be the world's largest ethylene plant in San Patricio County, Texas, and spurred Home Depot into investing $50 million into skills training programs over the next 10 years: there simply aren't enough construction workers to keep up with demand.
"For better or worse, business is good for us. They're beating down the door," says Tyson Conrad, the president and founder of Tampa-based Goliath Construction Consulting, which serves as a national recruiting and consultation outfit geared specifically toward the construction sector. "We're in a place now where you have a booming economy and booming construction industry and lack of manpower. So people have gotten creative and desperate, essentially."
Conrad works with clients across the country, many of whom seem to be telling the same story. With the economy chugging along through what is now its second-longest recovery to date and with demand for more affordable housing options as high as it's been in years, Americans' desire for new homes, buildings and facilities is through the roof.
But there simply aren't enough skilled builders around to complete the work. Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That average was eclipsed in only one year going back to 2000, when the BLS first began tracking the data – and that year was 2007, at the tail end of the U.S. housing boom.
The labor shortage is so acute that 91 percent of more than 2,700 contractors, construction managers, builders and trade contractors surveyed in the latest Commercial Construction Index reported having a difficult or moderately difficult time finding skilled workers.
"Among the contractors expressing concern about worker skill levels, more than one-third (37 percent) believe the problem has worsened in the last six months, and almost half (47 percent) believe it will continue to worsen in the next six months," according to the report.
That shortage hasn't been a terrible thing for those already in the industry, as their pay has skyrocketed in tandem with their demand. Wages of production and nonsupervisory construction employees – which excludes managers, sales personnel and accounting staff associated with the industry – climbed 3.6 percent between May 2017 and May 2018. That's comfortably larger than the 2.8 percent wage gain production and nonsupervisory employees across the economy enjoyed over the same window.
A recent blog post from Aaron Terrazas, an economic research director at Zillow, identified even more drastic gains among residential construction workers, in particular. Such employees closed out April with a 5 percent annual wage gain, nearly double the 2.9 percent uptick for all of the economy's private-sector workers.
"These days they're making a killing," Conrad says, telling the story of a client's ******* who at 23 years old is making around $75,000 annually as a foreman. "For so long, it was seen that if you worked with a hard hat, you didn't make a lot of money and you were a dummy. I can tell you that is contrary to everything that is reality."
[
READ:
What the Price of Oil Says About the Economy ]
Construction wage growth isn't necessarily expected to be exponential – the BLS last year estimated the top 10 percent of construction workers earned an annual wage of roughly $63,000, with top-tier construction managers bringing in nearly $160,000. But Conrad says demand for workers has created attractive options in the industry, particularly for young workers as the more established individuals phase out of the workforce.
Those in the construction industry are, on average, slightly older than workers in the rest of the economy, with a median age of 42.6. Only 1.8 percent of the industry's workers are between 16 and 19 years old, while fewer than 9.4 percent are younger than 25. Both percentages are shy of national averages for all industries, suggesting a larger-than-normal share of construction workers are on the older side.
Conrad says he's concerned by the fact that young people don't seem to be embracing the industry in the same way that they used to. He partly blames budget cuts to shop and skills development opportunities in high schools while also pointing out the negative stigma he believes trade professions developed over time.
"There was a huge push in the '90s and even in the early 2000s that if you were going to be successful, you needed to go to college. And that was the only way. And you add to that the Baby Boomers all migrating out of the workforce now – you've got a trifecta of major issues," he says. "You have few people going in, a lot of people going out."
He also points to a downtick in immigration as a driving factor in the skilled construction worker shortage. A recent industry analysis spearheaded by Natalia Siniavskaia, the assistant vice president of housing policy research at the National Association of Home Builders, found that immigrants constitute roughly 30 percent of the construction industry. In states such as California and Texas, that share sits north of 40 percent.
"Over the last two administrations, the last one and this one, we've seen significant drops in undocumented workers coming into the country," Conrad says, noting that this trend has in some cases left construction employers in a bind.
In order to solve the construction shortage with domestic workers, officials and educators throughout the country have made efforts to get students more excited and more involved in working with their hands, hoping to foster a new generation of builders to help address today's shortfall.
"I think there was a mentality here for awhile that we had to send our ******* to college," says David Curry, director of career and technical education at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "We want our students to find success. For certain students, that doesn't mean sitting in a classroom for four more years."
At the Milton Hershey School, Curry stresses a "learning by doing" approach that allows students to get hands-on experience in their field of choice. The institution – founded in 1909 as the Hershey Industrial School by chocolatier Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine – functions as a boarding school catering specifically to low-income students. It offers traditional academic coursework as well as specialized training in one of 11 career pathways for more senior students.
For students in the school's construction and carpentry pathway, that means personally building houses in the nearby community from the ground up.
"At the start of their junior year, the house was nonexistent. It was a patch of dirt. They have been involved in every phase of the building of this house," Curry says, noting that this year's crop of seniors just finished the 52nd home Milton Hershey students have constructed in the area. "In their junior class, they came out and built the rafters and walled it and roofed it. They've spent most of their senior year working on the interior of the house. They work alongside our instructional trade professionals we have here at the school."
Curry says the school has experienced staff members on hand to help guide the students, though it will occasionally reach out to trade workers in the community to fill gaps in their expertise. He says the school doesn't have a painter on hand, for example, so that work will be subcontracted.
"The entire goal of this is not for our staff to build this house. At the end of the day, it's the ******* who are building the house," Curry says. "Obviously, ******* make mistakes at times, and it becomes a learning experience. But we're not going to hand a house to a family and not have it be what it's supposed to be."
[
PHOTOS:
The Big Picture – May 2018 ]
Four graduating seniors plan to enroll in a local technical school to continue their skills development, though Curry says interest in the construction and carpentry program is rising. Two freshmen signed up for the concentration last year, he said, while 17 jumped into it this year.
The school is relatively unique in the fact that it is supported in part by a significant endowment that was left behind after Milton Hershey's death – so it can afford the equipment and tools necessary for students to gain such hands-on experience. But Curry says he hopes other schools are able to increase awareness of and support for trade and construction programs going forward. The jobs, he says, are certainly available.
"There's a huge growth in opportunities nationally in trade areas," Curry says. "Oftentimes these are ******* that know they want to do that and they want to go directly into that field, either to a two-year school or directly to work. … This is designed to make sure they're prepared for what they'll see in the real world."
Andrew Soergel, Senior Reporter
Andrew Soergel is a Senior Reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow ... Read more
Tags: economy, employment
Where Are All the Builders?
Construction costs are climbing and production is lagging, in part because there aren't enough workers to go around.
By Andrew Soergel Senior ReporterJune 15, 2018, at 6:00 a.m.
Where Are All the Builders?
More
Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
The United States has a building problem.
The country that paved one of the most expansive highway and transportation systems on the planet, that festooned a riverside between Maryland and Virginia with ornate marble and sandstone statues, columns and monuments in the creation of the nation's capital, that introduced architectural marvels to the world ranging from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Empire State Building to the Space Needle, is now dogged by an ailing construction industry.
[
READ:
Fed Signals Future Rate Hikes as Inflation Accelerates ]
A common thread has waylaid the building of a much-anticipated senior community in Oro Valley, Arizona, ****** Exxon Mobil to retool the construction of what would be the world's largest ethylene plant in San Patricio County, Texas, and spurred Home Depot into investing $50 million into skills training programs over the next 10 years: there simply aren't enough construction workers to keep up with demand.
"For better or worse, business is good for us. They're beating down the door," says Tyson Conrad, the president and founder of Tampa-based Goliath Construction Consulting, which serves as a national recruiting and consultation outfit geared specifically toward the construction sector. "We're in a place now where you have a booming economy and booming construction industry and lack of manpower. So people have gotten creative and desperate, essentially."
Conrad works with clients across the country, many of whom seem to be telling the same story. With the economy chugging along through what is now its second-longest recovery to date and with demand for more affordable housing options as high as it's been in years, Americans' desire for new homes, buildings and facilities is through the roof.
But there simply aren't enough skilled builders around to complete the work. Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That average was eclipsed in only one year going back to 2000, when the BLS first began tracking the data – and that year was 2007, at the tail end of the U.S. housing boom.
The labor shortage is so acute that 91 percent of more than 2,700 contractors, construction managers, builders and trade contractors surveyed in the latest Commercial Construction Index reported having a difficult or moderately difficult time finding skilled workers.
"Among the contractors expressing concern about worker skill levels, more than one-third (37 percent) believe the problem has worsened in the last six months, and almost half (47 percent) believe it will continue to worsen in the next six months," according to the report.
That shortage hasn't been a terrible thing for those already in the industry, as their pay has skyrocketed in tandem with their demand. Wages of production and nonsupervisory construction employees – which excludes managers, sales personnel and accounting staff associated with the industry – climbed 3.6 percent between May 2017 and May 2018. That's comfortably larger than the 2.8 percent wage gain production and nonsupervisory employees across the economy enjoyed over the same window.
A recent blog post from Aaron Terrazas, an economic research director at Zillow, identified even more drastic gains among residential construction workers, in particular. Such employees closed out April with a 5 percent annual wage gain, nearly double the 2.9 percent uptick for all of the economy's private-sector workers.
"These days they're making a killing," Conrad says, telling the story of a client's ******* who at 23 years old is making around $75,000 annually as a foreman. "For so long, it was seen that if you worked with a hard hat, you didn't make a lot of money and you were a dummy. I can tell you that is contrary to everything that is reality."
[
READ:
What the Price of Oil Says About the Economy ]
Construction wage growth isn't necessarily expected to be exponential – the BLS last year estimated the top 10 percent of construction workers earned an annual wage of roughly $63,000, with top-tier construction managers bringing in nearly $160,000. But Conrad says demand for workers has created attractive options in the industry, particularly for young workers as the more established individuals phase out of the workforce.
Those in the construction industry are, on average, slightly older than workers in the rest of the economy, with a median age of 42.6. Only 1.8 percent of the industry's workers are between 16 and 19 years old, while fewer than 9.4 percent are younger than 25. Both percentages are shy of national averages for all industries, suggesting a larger-than-normal share of construction workers are on the older side.
Conrad says he's concerned by the fact that young people don't seem to be embracing the industry in the same way that they used to. He partly blames budget cuts to shop and skills development opportunities in high schools while also pointing out the negative stigma he believes trade professions developed over time.
"There was a huge push in the '90s and even in the early 2000s that if you were going to be successful, you needed to go to college. And that was the only way. And you add to that the Baby Boomers all migrating out of the workforce now – you've got a trifecta of major issues," he says. "You have few people going in, a lot of people going out."
He also points to a downtick in immigration as a driving factor in the skilled construction worker shortage. A recent industry analysis spearheaded by Natalia Siniavskaia, the assistant vice president of housing policy research at the National Association of Home Builders, found that immigrants constitute roughly 30 percent of the construction industry. In states such as California and Texas, that share sits north of 40 percent.
"Over the last two administrations, the last one and this one, we've seen significant drops in undocumented workers coming into the country," Conrad says, noting that this trend has in some cases left construction employers in a bind.
In order to solve the construction shortage with domestic workers, officials and educators throughout the country have made efforts to get students more excited and more involved in working with their hands, hoping to foster a new generation of builders to help address today's shortfall.
"I think there was a mentality here for awhile that we had to send our ******* to college," says David Curry, director of career and technical education at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "We want our students to find success. For certain students, that doesn't mean sitting in a classroom for four more years."
At the Milton Hershey School, Curry stresses a "learning by doing" approach that allows students to get hands-on experience in their field of choice. The institution – founded in 1909 as the Hershey Industrial School by chocolatier Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine – functions as a boarding school catering specifically to low-income students. It offers traditional academic coursework as well as specialized training in one of 11 career pathways for more senior students.
For students in the school's construction and carpentry pathway, that means personally building houses in the nearby community from the ground up.
"At the start of their junior year, the house was nonexistent. It was a patch of dirt. They have been involved in every phase of the building of this house," Curry says, noting that this year's crop of seniors just finished the 52nd home Milton Hershey students have constructed in the area. "In their junior class, they came out and built the rafters and walled it and roofed it. They've spent most of their senior year working on the interior of the house. They work alongside our instructional trade professionals we have here at the school."
Curry says the school has experienced staff members on hand to help guide the students, though it will occasionally reach out to trade workers in the community to fill gaps in their expertise. He says the school doesn't have a painter on hand, for example, so that work will be subcontracted.
"The entire goal of this is not for our staff to build this house. At the end of the day, it's the ******* who are building the house," Curry says. "Obviously, ******* make mistakes at times, and it becomes a learning experience. But we're not going to hand a house to a family and not have it be what it's supposed to be."
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The Big Picture – May 2018 ]
Four graduating seniors plan to enroll in a local technical school to continue their skills development, though Curry says interest in the construction and carpentry program is rising. Two freshmen signed up for the concentration last year, he said, while 17 jumped into it this year.
The school is relatively unique in the fact that it is supported in part by a significant endowment that was left behind after Milton Hershey's death – so it can afford the equipment and tools necessary for students to gain such hands-on experience. But Curry says he hopes other schools are able to increase awareness of and support for trade and construction programs going forward. The jobs, he says, are certainly available.
"There's a huge growth in opportunities nationally in trade areas," Curry says. "Oftentimes these are ******* that know they want to do that and they want to go directly into that field, either to a two-year school or directly to work. … This is designed to make sure they're prepared for what they'll see in the real world."
Andrew Soergel, Senior Reporter
Andrew Soergel is a Senior Reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow ... Read more
Tags: economy, employment
they say a good judge of the economy is the housing market......and if you look...it is slowing down
You aren't looking in the right places then.
The market will crash again, it always does (I suspect within the next 3 to 5). but right now if you try to get a house built - good luck. most builders are booked well into next year.
Housing is in high demand around me, but so is skilled labor. Most young people now-a-days would rather take a "Liberal Arts" major rather than learn an actual trade they can make money at.
That's pretty appropriate timing, again ... Republicans are good at taking a growing economy and crashing it, then let the Democrats take over to correct it, and complain/obstruct/fault on the sideline to everything the Democrats do to fix it. They'll then spend ALL of 2001 and 2002 faulting the Democrats to try to recapture the seat majorities they're bound to lose in 2018 & 2000. And, of course, they'll accuse the Democrats of raising taxes and promise another huge "middle class tax cut" AGAIN ... yada, yada, yada. (yawnnnnnnn)
nongolfer
Male
DaphneD inadvertently copies, and pastes an article that is complimentary of Trump's policies. Proably becuase she didn't read, ot undersntadn what she posted.
Subhub174014 responds, and his response isn't remotely related to DaphneD's post.
MacNFries add his critical economic analysis, which somehow tries to tie the tax cut to an overheated housing market, which has been overheated since the last POTUS, who he voted for, but hey, it sounded critical of Trump, so it must be good. Never mind it is largely unrelated.
And on it goes.
It must be a boring day at work.
Subhub174014 responds, and his response isn't remotely related to DaphneD's post.
MacNFries add his critical economic analysis, which somehow tries to tie the tax cut to an overheated housing market, which has been overheated since the last POTUS, who he voted for, but hey, it sounded critical of Trump, so it must be good. Never mind it is largely unrelated.
And on it goes.
It must be a boring day at work.
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