I went to community college, got my associates in film, graduated with my associates in 2007 with $8500 in debt and now work running an auto body supply house. Complete 180 from what I went to school for.. Just my couple cents.
I went to community college, got my associates in film, graduated with my associates in 2007 with $8500 in debt and now work running an auto body supply house. Complete 180 from what I went to school for.. Just my couple cents.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to 93EXCivic :
I agree with most of what you are saying.
One note... I went to a cheap state school and got a fairly useless arts degree. I graduated in 1983 with $16,000 in debt. I know that sounds great, but when adjusted for inflation it's $42,126.
Education has always been expensive.
Your STEM degreed friends got better educations than I did. Hopefully, it will mean better opportunities for them over their lifetimes. I wish I had a STEM degree.
The bigger question today may be whether a degree brings employment opportunity at all.
I mean I get what you are staying about it always being somewhat expensive but it is increasing in cost far beyond inflation. I am not sure how much yours was payed for but my $40k was only paying for 12 credit hours (6 in state, 6 out of state), lab fees, books, room and board and meal plans (that were required). That to me is insane. Fortunately my parents had a decent chuck put away for me and I worked an internship and a couple research grants while i was at school so i left with basically no debt. And yeah some people could get away without room and board by living at home but I know I didn't have that option due to location.
As far as whether a degree is worth it, that is a good question. It seems like a lot of employers want degrees even if the position total would not require it.
In reply to aircooled :
I think "teeth kicked in" is referring to more by "the man", "the system", or (I think more significantly ) circumstances. French's example do seem to be more in the realm of bad luck and and some unfortunate / poor decision making.
A relevant example might more be the general store owner in small town when a Walmart opens near by. The evolving retail "system" is poised to kick his teeth in. Now, if he was being smart about it (like the proverbial typewriter repairman), he would realize that and get out while he can, rather than get run into the ground, so there is some control there. He should have some responsibility to pay attention to the how the sector he operates in is evolving.
A more severe issue (I think) of circumstance would be someone who comes from a very poor area / community. Poor communities tend to have more crime / drugs etc, fewer good job opportunities and many time poor access / ability to get to areas with better opportunity etc. The "system" of that community can certainly do some kicking. You might say "just leave" but that may require abandoning family in need (or even being "kicked" before they are old enough to leave). The causes and cures for these issues are of course wildly layered, but I think it's safe to say the government and the community both play a part in a creating it /perpetuating it / making it worse.
Sorry, I missed your post. Lots of good points, and I agree that there are many factors holding people back and not everyone starts from an equal starting point. But I stand by my assertion that most of those items are still farther down the list of obstacles a person faces, well below a list of things that they have direct control of. Part of the problem is that we hear so much about these outside factors, that we frequently ignore or are not aware of the factors we can control. It’s more convenient to blame “the system” rather than take personal responsibility. Not saying it’s not a factor- but kick in the teeth sounds a bit extreme, more like a tug back on the shirt tail. Circling back, this is part of the reason why minimum wage hikes don’t work. Sure, it’s great for a minimum wage earner initially- assuming they keep their job. But then it artificially stunts the growth of employees that would otherwise strive to do better, which most minimum wage earners usually do.
·Senior Editor
Since the Great Recession, the U.S. has seen a major shortage of workers in the construction industry.
“The labor shortage, specifically in the residential construction side, has been kind of a uniquely post-Great Recession experience,” Rob Dietz, Chief Economist at the National Association of Home Builders, told Yahoo Finance.
The construction industry lost approximately 1.5 million jobs during the financial crisis, according to FRED data. The industry has not yet gained back those jobs, with Dietz describing it as a “sluggish process.”
“The JOLTS data says we’re short about 350,000 workers,” he said. “The skilled labor shortage has gotten progressively more challenging as this lengthy growth cycle has continued. The impacts of it are … how long it takes for an individual homeowner to access a remodel, or how long that project will take. Those duration times have gone up.”
Dietz said “there’s a whole set of limiting factors” for the construction industry over the last 10 years.
Dietz refers to these factors as the five L’s in building: lack of labor, lack of lots, lack of lending for builders and land developers, lumber and material issues, and law issues.
“The economic impact is the fact that we’ve got a housing deficit,” Dietz said. “I think that’s fairly clear. The housing deficit means a shortfall in inventory, which has resulted in home prices going up faster than incomes and faster than inflection.”
He added: “We calculate about a billion-unit deficit between apartments and single family homes, combine. And it’s contributed to the housing affordability prices. The fact that home prices have continued to outpace income growth, inflation growth. Inventory has been so tight, and the key reason for that has been the labor shortage.”
Part of the challenge is also demographics, with Baby Boomers becoming older.
“The aging existing workforce, which took an enormous hit during the Great Recession with people losing jobs, in some cases leaving the industry and not wanting to come back, means that we really have this large deficit of skilled labor,” Dietz said.
Then, there are the millennials, who are becoming more and more college-educated.
“Surveys that we’ve done of young adults, 18-25, construction doesn’t fare very well in terms of an intended career,” Dietz said. “You see stronger attachment to wanting jobs that are less seasonal, less physical, that are in office environments behind screens. That’s a consequence, I believe, of the fact that we’ve got a much greater fare of people going to four-year universities today than we did 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
Wages may play a small role in the lack of available workers. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the median annual wage for construction workers in May 2018 was $34,810.
“The wages have increased generally faster than inflation, although one criticism I often see is … wages should be rising faster if this was a more intense labor shortage,” Dietz said. “That completely misses the actual decision making that’s undertaken by these small firms.”
Another factor in the construction shortage are changes in immigration policies.
According to a note from Goldman Sachs, the U.S. labor force has grown by almost 30% since 1990 and immigrants account for about half of the net increase. Furthermore, out of all major occupations, construction and extraction has the highest number of foreign-born workers.
“Admittedly, there’s been a slowdown in immigration,” Dietz said. “If you talk to individual markets, particularly in markets where that share is high — Florida, Texas, California, Arizona — they’ll say the slowdown in immigration has had an impact on the availability of labor. But the fact that the share has ticked up a little big suggests there are two factors at play, and I think you’ve got to give equal weight to both.”
“One is the slowdown in immigration — construction, traditionally, going back to the mid-1800s, has been an important source of employment for immigrants,” Dietz said. “The other factor, though, is we are having difficulty in the construction industry attracting that native-born American population. Getting young people coming out of high school.”
Another problem that has arisen, particularly within the construction industry, is the opioid crisis.
“I grew up in Dayton Ohio … Montgomery County is right next door,” Dietz said. “It was really sort of ground zero for the opioid issue. It’s had impacts on that local labor market. I do think it’s had an impact.”
Yahoo Finance previously reported on a note from Barclays Research, which found that construction workers are nearly six times more likely than other industries to develop an opioid addiction. “In Massachusetts,” the analysts noted, “~25% of all opioid overdose deaths were from construction.”
“I travel every week and I get out and talk in front of builders, remodelers, lumber yard dealers, and equipment leaders, and I do hear it,” Dietz said. “If I had to guess, it’s somewhere between 1 in 10 or 1 in 5 [businesses affected]. It’s not like every single firm has had to deal with this.” He cited a paper that “found a really strong correlation with disability claims and an even stronger correlation with disability claims linked to opioid abuse.”
And a study from the Cleveland Fed concluded that “prescription opioids can account for 44% of the realized national decrease in men's labor force participation between 2001 and 2015” and a 17% decline for prime age women.
With no one clear cause of this shortage, but rather a confluences of several issues, “there’s no silver bullet” to how to fix it, Dietz explained.
“It’s going to be a combination of recruiting new people into the industry, people who can become skilled tradesmen and ultimately, small business owners,” he said. “And it’s also going to need investment in innovative technologies, processes, by which we can raise productivity...
“If you travel anywhere, you see people spending time, resources, money, working with schools to really address what is really a real macro risk for the U.S. economy,” Dietz added. “If we face this kind of skilled worker shortage, it will have impacts on growth in the future.”
Some data about migration patterns in 2020
Similar study from different moving company
More data from different source
Yet another study with similar findings
I'm sure there are a few ways that this data can be interpreted. Without getting patio'd, what I can say jumps off the page to me, are that states seeing large outflows are mostly known to have pretty high taxes and cost of living, while states seeing large inflows are known for lower taxes and cost of living.
In reply to pheller :
Yup.
Pretty good article, although I think they left out some more important things (like the elimination of technical training in high schools, and the utter failure on the part of the government to attempt to assist the construction industry after the Great Recession, and the vast deepening of industry regulatory enforcement). I also question the opioid issue- I think they have reversed the cause and effect.
Overall, good article.
I wonder why an article about residential construction decided to use photographs that are ENTIRELY commercial and civil construction...
In reply to STM317 :
Idaho?? 
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to STM317 :
Idaho??
Ski Towns in the Rockies are booming thanks to high paid tech workers leaving the Bay Area/PNW
Bozeman, Boise, Park City, etc are de-rigueur these days for wealthy people
I've heard some people that live in these places are seeing their home values double in the last 18 months. And they weren't cheap to start with.
In reply to STM317 :
Ahh... I made the mistake of assuming "migration" meant "minority migration".
Hadn't really thought of wealthy migration.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to STM317 :
Ahh... I made the mistake of assuming "migration" meant "minority migration".
Hadn't really thought of wealthy migration.
It's the wealthy migration that's causing the price of houses to skyrocket in most places, not just the Rockies. In a lot of cases, people that simply tolerated living in major cities for high paying jobs no longer have to. And people that could barely afford to live in expensive places sell their homes for a large amount and move to more financially comfortable locations where they suddenly have a bunch of money to spend and "can't believe houses are so cheap here". The trend began a few years ago, but the pandemic has only accelerated that trend.
TX is actually the most common landing spot for those leaving CA
And this migration has some interesting effects on the landing spots that have national impacts
STM317 said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to STM317 :
Ahh... I made the mistake of assuming "migration" meant "minority migration".
Hadn't really thought of wealthy migration.
It's the wealthy migration that's causing the price of houses to skyrocket in most places, not just the Rockies. In a lot of cases, people that simply tolerated living in major cities for high paying jobs no longer have to. And people that could barely afford to live in expensive places sell their homes for a large amount and move to more financially comfortable locations where they suddenly have a bunch of money to spend and "can't believe houses are so cheap here". The trend began a few years ago, but the pandemic has only accelerated that trend.
TX is actually the most common landing spot for those leaving CA
And this migration has some interesting effects on the landing spots that have national impacts
It is interesting. I recently moved back to my homestate of North Carolina. The area I am in (Mooresville) has something like 50% non-locals according to city-data.com. My neighborhood alone is almost entirely those from the high outbound states in the graph above. The housing market here is absolutely crazy because of it. Every goes "wow you can get a big house on almost an acre for half a million; that's cheap!" while the locals are "You're paying over 200k for a house?!?". Me. I'm locals. Or at least I was when I first had the sticker shock. Our new Californian neighbors were blown away by the "affordability" here. But heck, we sold our older, smaller house on a smaller lot near DC for a much better one down here and we still pocketed a ton of cash despite a house that costs over twice what my parents' house costs in the next county. I'm personally okay paying the premium for a house here because we managed to get one below market, and, at least while the market is hot, the gain in equity outpaces my wife's salary.
In reply to pheller :
Good article although the opiod thing isn't anywhere near a problem I've seen.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to STM317 :
Idaho??
Yeah it's pretty insane up here. People can't believe that their houses have tripled in value so they sell........only to find out that they can't buy anything again.
It's made construction super boom though too.
It'll boom for a couple years then the winters will weed out a lot. Or you'll get a bunch of snowbirds.
In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :
That's not a shock. I've seen it in multiple areas for over 30 years.
The surprise was that Idaho topped the migration list (but wealthy migration wasn't on my radar at that moment).
In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah not that type of migration lol
I'm not surprised people have found it though, it's beautiful up here. Here's the lake that's close by
It does come with some cultural downsides though
STM317 said:It's the wealthy migration that's causing the price of houses to skyrocket in most places, not just the Rockies. In a lot of cases, people that simply tolerated living in major cities for high paying jobs no longer have to. And people that could barely afford to live in expensive places sell their homes for a large amount and move to more financially comfortable locations where they suddenly have a bunch of money to spend and "can't believe houses are so cheap here". The trend began a few years ago, but the pandemic has only accelerated that trend.
That's happening here at such a level that nearby towns are turning builders away because they don't have the infrastructure to support the increased population. I've also seen a trend where people who have been financially irresponsible all their lives are selling their city homes, paying off huge lines of credit, and buying country homes with their leftover money.
Peabody said:STM317 said:It's the wealthy migration that's causing the price of houses to skyrocket in most places, not just the Rockies. In a lot of cases, people that simply tolerated living in major cities for high paying jobs no longer have to. And people that could barely afford to live in expensive places sell their homes for a large amount and move to more financially comfortable locations where they suddenly have a bunch of money to spend and "can't believe houses are so cheap here". The trend began a few years ago, but the pandemic has only accelerated that trend.
That's happening here at such a level that nearby towns are turning builders away because they don't have the infrastructure to support the increased population.
In most of America, this would never happen. Just keep building, we'll figure out how to do roads, schools, etc. later!
Charleston SC is insane. The house I bought in the late 80s for $48k sold a couple of years ago for $430k. That gets you 1000 sqft 2 bed 1 bath on a 7200 sqft lot. A 1 bed 1 bath apartment in the same area is $1500+ a month.
Approximately 7 families per day move to the area though and construction/zoning/permitting can't keep up.
Local governments are screwed either way. Building infrastructure takes funds that only exist from tax revenue that only comes in *after* people move in. Go out on a financial limb before the tax revenue comes in and you run a massive risk if there's ever a delay in when you expected the tax revenue. You also have to make sure that revenue comes in before the next election cycle or you get skewered for building roads that aren't needed [yet].
Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah not that type of migration lol
I'm not surprised people have found it though, it's beautiful up here. Here's the lake that's close by
It does come with some cultural downsides though
93EXCivic said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to 93EXCivic :
I agree with most of what you are saying.
One note... I went to a cheap state school and got a fairly useless arts degree. I graduated in 1983 with $16,000 in debt. I know that sounds great, but when adjusted for inflation it's $42,126.
Education has always been expensive.
Your STEM degreed friends got better educations than I did. Hopefully, it will mean better opportunities for them over their lifetimes. I wish I had a STEM degree.
The bigger question today may be whether a degree brings employment opportunity at all.
I mean I get what you are staying about it always being somewhat expensive but it is increasing in cost far beyond inflation. I am not sure how much yours was payed for but my $40k was only paying for 12 credit hours (6 in state, 6 out of state), lab fees, books, room and board and meal plans (that were required). That to me is insane. Fortunately my parents had a decent chuck put away for me and I worked an internship and a couple research grants while i was at school so i left with basically no debt. And yeah some people could get away without room and board by living at home but I know I didn't have that option due to location.
As far as whether a degree is worth it, that is a good question. It seems like a lot of employers want degrees even if the position total would not require it.
Getting a degree is about your ability to stick with something and finish it. I could go on about how in the US it takes nearly 3x the hours of training to become a hair dresser than an LEO, but that wouldn't be fun, would it?
z31maniac said:Getting a degree is about your ability to stick with something and finish it. ...
And this is one reason why you see what might be called "degree inflation". Many jobs seem to have unjustifiable degree requirements because collage degrees have become so much more common, it is now a measure of if you have a typical / reasonable education. Kind of like how having a high school diploma used to mean you had some basic qualities, weather what you learned was necessary in the job or not.
aircooled said:And this is one reason why you see what might be called "degree inflation". Many jobs seem to have unjustifiable degree requirements because collage degrees have become so much more common, it is now a measure of if you have a typical / reasonable education. Kind of like how having a high school diploma used to mean you had some basic qualities, weather what you learned was necessary in the job or not.
In my situation I see a lot of incompetence in the human resources role.
Companies ask for Inter provincial, and "Red seal" licenses for my trade when they can't even get people with a standard license. When I've asked during interviews why the requirement, nobody has been able to answer satisfactorily. Some didn't even know what the difference was.
93EXCivic said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to 93EXCivic :
Education has always been expensive.I mean I get what you are staying about it always being somewhat expensive but it is increasing in cost far beyond inflation.
Which started happening not long after government-subsidized and guaranteed student loan programs appeared between 1965-1975.
But that's as far as I'm going with that.
STM317 said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to STM317 :
Idaho??
Ski Towns in the Rockies are booming thanks to high paid tech workers leaving the Bay Area/PNW
Bozeman, Boise, Park City, etc are de-rigueur these days for wealthy people
I've heard some people that live in these places are seeing their home values double in the last 18 months. And they weren't cheap to start with.
A couple of my bicycling friends from the DC area moved out to Bozeman a couple of years ago. They've been in their current house for a little over a year, I believe. He is retired (and working as a ski-bum/instructor) and she works for the Patent Office remotely. They love it out there, although the Montana winters are what they moved out there for.
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