Dive Brief:
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For every empty construction job, six unemployed workers are ready to start work, according to the Economic Policy Institute's analysis of data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and the Current Population Survey. The prevailing sentiment is that those positions remain unfilled because the willing workers simply don’t have the skills required for the openings.
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But Elise Gould, a senior economist and director of health policy research at EPI, has disputed the notion that the construction industry is suffering from shortage of skilled labor.
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She said if the labor market’s troubles across all industries were the result of skills shortages or “mismatches,” then some sectors would have more job openings than unemployed workers, and others would have more workers than vacancies. That’s not the case, said Gould, co-author of The State of Working America, who noted, “Despite claims from some employers, there is no shortage of construction workers."
Dive Insight:
Gould said the problem in the labor market is “a broad-based lack of demand for workers”—not an abundance of available workers who lack the skills needed for their industry.
Still, employers in the construction sector, which added an average of 28,000 jobs a month last year and 29,000 jobs in February of this year, continue to complain that they cannot fill the jobs they are creating.