Construction labor shortage means opportunity — and big bucks — for Idaho students
When Naroz Rezaie attended the construction management career fair last year as a Boise State University student, he landed an internship in construction.
On Thursday, Rezaie returned to the career fair, but not as a student looking for a job this time.
The Boise State grad returned as a full-time project engineer representing Venture General Contracting in Seattle, looking for the next prospect.
“I’m loving it so far,” Rezaie, 23, a Borah High grad, said of his job. “It’s a great job, I love what I do, it’s a great company to work for, a great environment. I love it.”
About 300 students are expected to attend the two-day career fair, with more than 80 companies looking for interns and full-time employees. Some companies were local or at least from Idaho, but many companies were national, hailing from such states as California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Virginia and Georgia.
William Warren, of Ohio-based Baker Concrete Construction, said he came to the career fair from Houston, where he’s based, looking for interns and full-time employees.
“The market is so crazy right now,” Warren said. “We have tried to be more selective about the jobs we take because we are so busy.”
He estimates that Baker, a $1.5 billion national company with offices all over the country, has upwards of 80 job openings just in management and hundreds more non-management jobs available.
“Our HR person likes to joke that people are jumping for a ‘buck and a truck,’ ” Warren said. It makes retention all the more important, he said.
In-demand workers
It’s a seller’s market if you’re looking for a job in construction.
The construction industry will need to attract nearly 650,000 additional workers on top of the normal pace of hiring in 2022 to meet the demand for labor, according to Associated Builders and Contractors.
This is part of a nationwide labor shortage that I’ve written about before. The labor shortage is caused by continued strong job growth, Baby Boomers retiring, younger workers not replacing them, declining labor participation, many women not returning to the workforce, declining immigration and lower birth rates. The United States has nearly 11 million job openings and only about 6 million available workers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Idaho has about 400 construction management job openings every year, according to the Idaho Department of Labor, with a total of 1,420 total jobs. That’s expected to grow 35% over the next eight years.
Starting pay for an entry-level worker is $48,329, but the typical annual salary is $85,286 and can go as high as $126,079 for an experienced construction manager, according to the Idaho Department of Labor.
That jibes with what I heard at the job fair on Thursday.
Warren said kids coming right out of college can get offers of about $70,000, and he’s heard some offers of $80,000 or $90,000.
While a college degree is not necessary for a construction manager, it helps.
Isaac Rede, with AllWest, a geotechnical consulting firm based in Hayden, Idaho, with offices in Meridian, Lewiston, Tri-Cities, Montana and Spokane, doesn’t have a college degree, and he’s been doing construction management for 30 years.
“We’re looking for attitude and aptitude,” Rede said. “Obviously, if you’re an engineer, you need an engineering degree, but we’re also looking for people who work hard, have good communication skills, a good work ethic and want to learn.”
Concrete decision
For Emilia Salazar, a junior construction management major at Boise State, Play-doh was the gateway for her love of concrete.
“I like Play-doh,” Salazar said. “It sounds silly, but that’s really the basic reason I got into concrete.”
She wants to work for a firm that does all the concrete work from start to finish — “forming, pouring and finishing.”
Salazar, a Nampa High grad, is also bilingual, a huge demand in the industry right now, Warren said.
Even though Salazar still has three semesters left to finish her degree, she already has a full-time job offer on the table from the company she interned with this summer after connecting with them at last year’s career fair.
In fact, nearly 100% of construction management students receive job offers within three months of graduation, according to Jamie Fink, communications specialist for the College of Engineering at Boise State.
The program graduates about 45 students every year, and about 95% of students complete internships before graduation.
And construction management students have the third-highest earning potential of all degrees offered at Boise State, and third nationally among other construction management programs, according to Fink.
Women in construction
I have to admit, I was expecting to see mostly men at the career fair, but I was surprised to see how many women were there, both representing companies and students looking for jobs.
The construction management program at Boise State has 377 students, a 50% increase over the last four years. In all, 12.5% of construction management students are female.
Sophia Escala, a Boise State sophomore, said she started out as a mechanical engineer major but had friends who were majoring in construction management.
“It’s more fun than my last major,” said Escala, who’s originally from San Diego. “It’s more social, it’s a good community, and I’m interested in the managerial side and being in a leadership role.”
She also said you can be a construction manager anywhere in the world and work on any number of projects you want. She wants to work on heavy civil construction and commercial projects.
She came to Thursday’s career fair prepared. She had 30 of the 83 companies ranked in preference and had identified her top company that she was hoping to line up for an internship for next summer, preferably in Denver.
Judging from the crowd Thursday and the overall labor shortage, I don’t think any of these kids is going to have any trouble finding jobs.
“The job market is a little scarce for employees right now,” Rede said. “We’re looking for good, smart people, help them get some experience and show them a side of the construction industry that provides a very good career for a lot of people.”
