Hammered by a growing labor shortage, the construction industry has launched a manhunt--and womanhunt--for new workers.
According to the Labor Department, the industry needs to attract 240,000 new workers each year to keep up with its building demands. But despite fervent recruitment efforts, the flow of new talent through the pipeline remains sluggish.
Males between ages 16 and 24 historically were construction's lifeblood. But this age group is showing little interest in the vocation. In an ABC News careers poll of 10,000 high school students, the adolescents ranked construction trades 251st of 252 potential vocations ("cowboy" came in last). Many are being lured away by another labor-starved industry with a far glitzier image: high technology.
It's no surprise, then, that industry honchos are finally giving women, who make up 46.1% of America's work force but only 9% of building industry workers, more attention. The previously estrogen-phobic "trowel trades" represented by the Bricklayers Union and International Masonry Institute, which boasted less than 0.2% female workers, have announced efforts to step up their recruitment of women. Colleges such as the University of Iowa are advertising female-oriented construction courses. Apprenticeship programs throughout the nation are welcoming women with open arms and even free toolboxes. But are women coming to the job site? Or does there remain a structural deficiency in the construction industry that keeps them away?
Despite the industry's increased overtures to budding Rosie Riveters, the percentage of women in construction has declined since 1991, when women accounted for 11.4% of the work force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 2.7% of an estimated 5.4 million workers in skilled trades such as drywall lathers, roofers, electricians and plumbers are women.
Internal and External Resistance
Some industry analysts suggest that decades of discrimination and harassment in the field are repelling women applicants. Others argue that, despite changing mores, females are still socialized to avoid blue-collar work. And yet others believe that, despite the industry's publicized recruitment efforts, firms and unions are making little effort to train and hire women.
