Detroit Free Press: Home building industry has worker shortage

Michigan’s construction industry is on pace for a potential 37 percent increase this year and despite a statewide unemployment rate of 8.4 percent in April, one in three members of the Home Builders Association of Michigan reported in a May survey they are having difficulty finding enough skilled workers, reports the Detroit Free Press. Many of the 60,000 carpenters, re-modelers and other skilled tradesmen who lost their jobs are believed to have left the state in search of work or quit the building trades.

Excerpt: “There is labor out there, but not for the quality of work we do,” said Aaron Rigozzi, 38, a home builder and owner of Semper Fi Construction in South Haven. “You can hire people and they say they can do this or that, but they really can’t.”

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Source: Detroit Free Press