By Peter Grant | The Wall Street Journal
A growing labor shortage in the commercial real-estate industry is driving up the costs of some projects and could complicate lawmakers’ plans for a $1 trillion infrastructure-spending program, contractors say.
“Ever since we came out of the great recession, many folks in our industry have been saying: it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming,” said George Nash Jr. , director of preconstruction for Branch and Associates, a Roanoke, Va., contractor. “Today the problem is there.”
Construction businesses, excluding those building single-family homes, employed close to 4.2 million workers in April, up 3,000 from March, according to an analysis by the Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group. That was the highest employment level since November 2008, though still below the record 4.4 million workers employed in the nonresidential construction segment in February 2008, the analysis said.
