KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Christopher O'Keefee is the business manager for the Iron Workers Union Local 384 branch in Knoxville. He graduated high school in 2003. As he remembers it, labor was not revered back then.
"They pushed college for years, and labor was looked down upon. And now we're in a labor shortage, you see it," O'Keefe said. "Manufacturing has kind of disappeared."
The construction industry is growing across the country. In 2022, there was an average of 390,000 job openings per month, according to the Association of Builders and Contractors. Next year, the number is expected to surpass around 540,000 job openings.
Hancen Sale, government affairs and policy director at Knoxville Area Association of REALTORS (KAAR), said even with new developers and investors coming into the area — there's still need for workers.
The low home price competitive advantage that Knoxville had is completely gone, Sale said.
"There's a huge shortage of skilled workers across the board," Sale said. "We don't have enough skilled tradespeople to be able to build at the level that we need to, if we want to preserve the affordability that Tennessee has always retained and prided itself on. If we don't have enough housing, we will ultimately be much more unaffordable than we are today. "
The time to address the problem is now, Sale said. The success of Knoxville is ultimately tied to the housing market. The solution is embracing the missing middle-housing conversation to find and inject supply into a market that desperately needs it, Sale said.
Another solution comes from Iron Workers Union where they train people on how to work with large equipment and with iron. There are several requirements and a couple of those are to not have fear of heights, and to learn welding.
Trying out a few things to find what's the best fit for each person is important, O'Keefe said. The problem is the pay. Non-union construction jobs start from $12 per hour to $15 per hour.
"On our side, you see it run on $16, $17 per hour starting out, plus full benefits paid in as well, not out of their pocket," O'Keefe said. "So, you know, they're looking at a $20, almost $29 per hour package. You see them starting to pay a little bit more. But at the same time, just, it's not enough yet."
This type of work includes a big amount of planning, skill and knowledge. That's another gap, O'Keefe said. New workers may not have the same amount of in-house knowledge that older workers have, some of whom are now considering retirement.
If construction companies bring more apprentices in, it could help narrow the gap, O'Keefe said.
"My biggest hope is that we continue to share the American pride we had in constructing our own things by putting our own hands on it, showing it to our kids and say, 'Hey, we built that,'" O'Keefe said.