By Jonathan Bach – Staff Reporter, Portland Business Journal
Sep 1, 2021

There’s reason to cheer in the construction industry as lumber costs level off from pandemic highs, where by one estimate they approached the price of gold within the past year thanks to forceful demand and stifled supply.

The lumber and wood price index tumbled during the brief, official recession last year before rising to record heights, only to fall in the last few months, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data. But another problem stands to frustrate builders as it has so many other businesses: Falling shorthanded.
Like many professions, construction workers spend years refining their skills. Yet the Great Recession threw construction’s labor market out of whack, with those repercussions likely to reverberate for years. “The skilled person who has 15 to 20 years’, 25 years’ experience — that’s where there’s a real lack of available skill,” said Daniel Pomfrett, a vice president with Cumming, a real estate project management and cost consultancy.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, it took three or four years before people began getting back into construction for training, Pomfrett said. It then took another, say, four years for workers to accumulate experience. “Then you’re into 2016, which is only a couple years off of when the pandemic hit, and so you have this stop-start nature,” he said. “What we haven’t seen is that flow of people coming through the education system into the industry.”

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