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The economy today presents a number of challenges, so it would be understandable if the top priority were not to build the future workforce for the construction industry.

The present economic statistics look horrible for construction:

鈥� Employment has dropped from a peak of 110,000 in December 2007 to about 73,000 today;

鈥� Unemployment (a measure of the demand for human resources because construction is taking place) stands at 36 percent;

鈥� Construction volumes are down approximately 20-30 percent in the Portland-metro area, and 60-90 percent in parts of Southern Oregon; and

鈥�Privately funded projects are still virtually nonexistent, because available cash is basically non-lendable due to regulator-imposed requirements that make equity and borrowing terms nearly impossible for owners and builders to accept.

Even with all of this staring at them, smart companies are looking ahead, and what they are seeing is a need for people.

As the demographics of our society change, one trend is unquestionably clear: baby boomers are at the beginning of a retirement bubble.

The years 1946 through 1964 are considered by most experts to be the “baby boom” period. During those 19 years, more than 76 million Americans were born. For comparison, during the following 19 years (from 1965-1984), 66 million Americans were born.

If the retirement age of the average construction worker is between 58 and 60, then those at the front edge of the boomer bubble started to retire between 2004 and 2006.

According to forecasts by the state of Oregon, approximately half of the boomers working in construction today will be retiring or otherwise leaving the workforce in the next eight to 10 years. This means two things: 1, the industry needs to get about the business of drawing new, interested and talented young people into construction; and 2, we need to be sure those new people are trained at the highest level possible.

One of the efforts being made is through the Architecture, Construction & Engineering Academy. ACE, the brainchild of Oregon Building Congress Executive Director Dick O’Connor, is a partnership of four school districts in east Multnomah County. Students from these districts spend half of their time at their home school, and half at ACE seeing how math, hands-on construction, English and writing come together in the real world.

In a few short days, ACE will be celebrating the commencement of its first graduating class. While this is a tremendous achievement, the state’s budget situation and an increasingly ugly revenue picture make ACE one more competitor for K-12 dollars each district will be hard-pressed to find. Despite these challenges, we need to find a way to keep students in training programs that feed directly into construction. Right now, many will leave for other pursuits as soon as their time at ACE ends.

ACE represents just one of many levels of training needed for the construction workforce of the future.

Other more traditional programs – union apprenticeship and training programs, the Northwest College of Construction, construction engineering and management programs at Oregon State University and the Oregon Institute of Technology – also provide avenues for training our future workforce. These programs are essential building blocks in this effort.

And yet, even though enrollment in these programs is good (increased, perhaps, because students are pursuing degrees or additional training during the recession), the numbers are not nearly great enough to fill the looming gap ahead. If half of today’s construction workforce is retiring over the next 10 years, then we need approximately 3,700 replacements per year just to meet today’s numbers, and substantially more when the economy improves.

A few weeks ago, at the invitation of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, I joined some of AGC’s leaders in a visit to their International Training Center. The place is enormous, and when plans are fully reached, there will be about a million square feet of training space at the Las Vegas facility.

The UBC’s leaders are proud of this world-class training center, and they have every right to be. I was utterly amazed at the breadth, depth and quality of the programs there. The UBC is showing what 21st century training programs should look like.

But for the industry to meet the people gap of the next decade, we need that million square feet of training space full, all year long. We also need enrollment in other programs to double and triple, and perhaps grow even more.

Without that kind of effort, construction will be facing another deficit – a people deficit – in just a few short years.

Mike Salsgiver is the executive director of the Oregon-Columbia chapter of Associated General Contractors of America. Contact him at 503-682-3363 or [email protected]