By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Many veterans in the industry are in their 50s and approaching retirement. Meanwhile, the industry is struggling to recruit young people, even though nationally construction jobs pay an average of about $19 an hour and in South Carolina nearly $15, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The industry’s skilled labor shortage is nationwide, and it is a concern that has been festering for years. In the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected the industry would need to hire 200,000 employees per year to replace those who are retiring or facing retirement and to meet the growing demand.

There are several reasons for the industry’s recruitment problems. Young people, particularly high school students, shun the construction industry as a possible career choice, preferring comfortable office jobs to sweaty construction work.

Also, other than Garrett Academy of Technology, a vocational high school in North Charleston, few area high schools expose students to vocational training. Such training used to be popular in high schools, Maher said, adding that his initial interest in the construction industry grew from a metalworking course he took as a Wando High School student.

Additionally, the construction industry has a terrible image. It is considered by many a last-ditch career option for high school dropouts or for academically poor students, said Harry Mashburn, 2006 national president of the Associated General Contractors of America and president and founder of Columbia-based Mashburn Construction Co., which has an office in Charleston.

“We’ve got to change our image before we do anything else,” Mashburn said.

The perception that construction work is no more than brute hammering and sawing still lingers with the public, many of whom do not realize today’s construction workers rely heavily on computers and are high-tech savvy, said Butch Clift, a North Charleston-based training consultant for the Carolinas chapter of the AGC.

Maher and other industry professionals believe construction trades should be re-introduced to high schools to help supply the industry with skilled labor.

To help improve its image and increase its future skilled labor force, the industry is reaching out to high school and middle school students. The AGC’s nationwide “Build Up!” program teaches fifth-graders about the construction industry and the careers it offers. “Roadways!,” the AGC’s supplement to “Build Up!,” promotes careers in highway construction.

Locally, industry professionals such as Emory Infinger, president of North Charleston-based Emory J. Infinger & Associates Construction Co., speaks to high school students to promote employment in the construction industry.

Yet students are not the only ones who need convincing that the construction industry provides viable career options. Parents of schoolchildren need convincing too, perhaps more so than their children, Infinger said.

Many parents are still intent on their children going to college, even if their children are more suited for vocational careers. School administrators have shared those sentiments, pushing students more toward college regardless of whether the students are interested in or prepared for higher education, said Renee Chewning, leadership development and program integration director for Sea Islands Youth Build, a Johns Island-based program offering academic and vocational training for high school dropouts.

The public schools’ emphasis on making all students college-bound has contributed to the state’s more than 40% high school dropout rate, Chewning and Infinger said.

How strongly South Carolina public schools re-embrace vocational training will be seen in 2011, by which time the state’s school districts must fully implement the S.C. Education and Economic Development Act. A key purpose of the act is to provide students not interested in attending college with the skills necessary to pursue careers in trades.

Mike Richardson, co-owner of Atlantic Electric LLC, an electrical contractor in North Charleston, believes the influx of illegal immigrants will do little to fill the industry’s skilled-labor void.

Immigrants are gravitating toward masonry, painting, drywall installation and other jobs suitable for lesser-skilled workers. Also, illegal immigrants working in construction usually stay in the United States for only a couple of years before returning home. In Richardson’s business, it takes five years of training to become an electrician, he said.

“I don’t see a long-term future in hiring short-term people,” Richardson said.

However, illegal immigrants do construction jobs Americans avoid and therefore are valuable to the industry, particularly to small specialty contractors, Mashburn said. He pointed to a Columbia-based cement-pouring contractor, 80% of whose employees are Hispanic immigrants.

Yet it is skilled, highly trained personnel the industry will need. In the past, high schools with comprehensive trade programs fulfilled that need, Maher said.

“Schools dropped vocational training programs about 20 years ago, and we’re seeing the impact,” he said.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer at the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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