With $550 billion in new federal infrastructure spending starting to be doled out, government and industry officials are in a race to find workers.
Tower technicians install broadband transmitters on a radio tower on the western edge of Emporia, Kan., in September.“There’s a real math problem of where do these workers come from,” said Mike Bartlett, the program manager for postsecondary and workforce success at the National League of Cities. “We’re seeing cities and localities turn to alternative pools of talent or talent that was always there but wasn’t always necessarily tapped or folks who had barriers to entering the labor market.
“We used to be No. 1 in the world in infrastructure, but over time we slipped to the 13th-best infrastructure — 13th-best infrastructure in the world from No. 1,” Biden told the crowd in Wisconsin. “How can you be the best economy in the world with a second-rate infrastructure? Not a joke — how can you do that?”
The construction worker shortage, which the industry has been struggling with for years, is largely being driven by a wave of baby boomers who are retiring from the industry and a lack of new workers coming into the construction trades, Brubeck said. “There’s a lot of concern that taxpayers aren’t really getting the best bargain for their investments,” he said. “There are going to be some serious delays, I think, because there won’t be enough labor in certain markets.”
Still, the administration has been working with local governments and employers on a variety of programs to try to build up that workforce with training and apprenticeship programs, with a focus on trying to bring more women and people of color into the workforce and recruiting workers from lower-income areas.
“We release about 18,000 people a year, and those are all people that need jobs and will be more successful if they go into the workforce,” Chambers-Smith said. “We already know that if we can get someone a job, they’re much less likely to re-offend. Jobs and housing are what helps keep people free.”
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