As we reported yesterday, a majority of construction firms in the U.S. are optimistic about 2016 volumes and plan to hire more workers to meet likely increased demand.
But their optimism is significantly tempered by two still-lingering factors: a shortage of available workers to hire and the quality of worker they’re seeing walk through their doors. And that’s despite meaningful changes to compensation.
According to Associated General Contractors of America’s 2016 Construction Outlook Survey, though 71 percent of 1,580 responding U.S. contractors say they plan on hiring more workers this year, 52 percent say the shortage of available workers is their biggest concern.
And 45 percent listed worker quality as theirs.
In fact, 39 percent said they are “have a hard time filling both salaried and craft worker positions,” while 40 percent say they don’t expect that to change any time soon.
This might explain why, despite nearly two-thirds of respondents voicing their plans to hire, nearly as many say they only anticipate their actual headcount to increase between 1 and 25 percent:
