Diversifying the Building Industry Can Help Solve the Labor Shortage

A severe skilled labor shortage is impacting our industry’s efforts to address housing affordability and to keep up with growing housing demand. Adding more women and other underrepresented workers into the field can be a big step that helps to solve the issue.

As part of Professional Women in Building (PWB) Week 2022, experts will join a free online shop talk, How to Prioritize Diversity in the Residential Construction Industry (Microsoft Teams link), today at 2 p.m. ET.

Amy James Neel, workforce and contracting equity manager at Portland Community College and a carpenter by trade, and Dr. Charner Rodgers, a licensed general contractor, development director, business diversity at McDonald's and vice chair of the NAHB Student Chapters Advisory Board, will share real world strategies to implement in your workplace that prioritize diversity.

“The construction industry is experiencing a crisis-level shortage of workers. Discounting or devaluing women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) workers is an expensive and risky business decision,” said Neel. “Research demonstrates that firms with more diverse talent benefit from greater innovation, better problem-solving and stronger creativity and insight than homogenous crews. The answer to a host of challenges our industry faces lies in developing the cultural literacy to successfully recruit, train and retain non-traditional workers.”

The conversation will be moderated by Juli Bacon, president of JB Consulting and 2017 NAHB PWB Council Chair.

In addition to the shop talk, the PWB Week Toolkit suggests highlighting women leaders that prioritize diversity at your local council using the social media hashtags #PWBWeek and #PWBProud.

Thank you to exclusive PWB Week sponsor Lowe’s Pro.