Everything's fine.
The big news of the week is the OSHA ETS for vaccination mandates has been suspended.
It could be thrown out.
Maybe. We'll see.
If you like legal documents here's the ruling.
Here's a fun fact from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
In its 50 year history, OSHA has issued ten (10) ETSs. Of those, six (6) were challenged in court.
Of those six, only one (1) survived.
One! Wow.
OSHA's ETS record is not great so odds are this ETS is heading to the scrap pile.
If the ETS is ultimately thrown out by the courts, it will also eliminate one disruptor for the construction labor markets.
But like a game of whack-a-mole new disruptors keep popping up.
This week it came in a trifecta from the Dodge Momentum index + the ABC backlog indicator + residential home building backlog (links below).
All three (3) of these indicators are forecasting heavy workloads ahead.
In construction, lots of work means lots of people. The problem right now for everybody is the industry is maxed out.
There aren't a lot of people waiting around to go to work.
The Road Dog Jobs metric of Total Available Construction Labor (TACL) - which measures how many workers are available after all job openings are filled - shows a dire situation.
Historically the TACL number has been 500,000+. As of right now that number is 35,000.
Not good.
We can't stress this enough: it's time to start planning for a major labor shortage.
The companies that win aren't going to be the ones whining about "nobody wants to work in trades anymore."
Boo-hoo.
The companies that are going to win are the companies that execute on a plan.
Here's our tips for the week for you to go out and win this war for talent:- Build your current and former employee list. Who's worked for your before and do you know how to get in touch with them? This is among the most valuable pieces of information any company can have. It's readily available to you - put that information together and start proactively using it.
- When is your greatest labor need? This is critical. Look at your projects and determine when the peak needs are going to be. Start communicating to your list (see note #1) when this need is going to be. Get into potential employee's thinking that in a certain week or month they should be looking for your jobs to be hiring.
- Maximize your communication. Whether you get in touch with your employee base via text, email, hand written letter or fax machine, get those channels open. Do giveaways. Hold contests. Do whatever it takes to have your company on the minds of people that you're going to want to hire. That way you an differentiate your jobs easier when the time comes to hire.
So yes - things are tough right now. And yes things are going to get worse.
The best companies will take action to get ahead of this - and they'll win.
Go make it happen! |
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