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Hiring Challenges in the Skilled Trades World
This is news to no one - but hiring skilled positions is rough. As a country, we’ve prioritized the ‘college for all’ path for decades, and we are now starting to pay the price. Careers like Plumber, Electrician, Carpenter, or HVAC Tech are often substantially more difficult to find than Software Engineers, Lawyers, or Accountants. Throw a rock 10 yards in any direction and you can hit an MBA. But a Journeyman HVAC Tech? Think again.
While this is generally well-understood, some further damning statistics:
- There are over 700,000 unfilled positions in residential construction alone
- The average age of our skilled trades workforce is 55 - nearly a decade older than the average working American
- 1 in 2 contractors across the US has reported having to turn down work due to not having the staff.
Simply put - this is a huge problem. Even if you are offering a top-tier compensation and benefits package, you are still likely to spend substantial time and energy hiring. If you aren’t paying market-competitive rates – you may find it nearly impossible to grow your team with the right talent.
Throw a rock 10 yards in any direction and you can hit an MBA. But a Journeyman HVAC Tech? Think again.
Current Pay Trends
Average pay rates for skilled employees have seen a meaningful increase over the last 7 years, with Carpentry, Electrical, and Plumbing leading the charge with over 20% wage growth (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Not incorporated into these wages are factors like overtime, commissions, job bonuses, health benefits, and retirement contributions. Many companies are reporting their employees taking home as much as 30% more than their listed hourly rate with these factors included.
Are you paying your team competitively enough?
Given the importance of offering competitive compensation (not just your hourly rate, but your benefits, schedule, and other perks), Classet compiled a Salary Explorer Tool to provide real-time market comparables for any position, in any city in the US.
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For the vast majority of the skilled world, changes in wages are reactive vs. proactive. Your top technician is threatening to leave, so it’s worth paying them an extra $2 per hour to keep your projects on track. There is no single, uniform ‘gold standard’ of pay rates. Instead, these tend to be highly variable by state, county, city, discipline, and even project.
The Salary Explorer Tool allows you to stay on top of exactly what is being offered in a world where changes are happening daily. In a highly competitive labor market, staying on top of what the best skilled trades employees are being offered is critical.
Is your hiring process a winner?
Wages aside, companies that have been able to hire the most successfully against steepening odds tend to have a hyper-efficient, no nonsense hiring process. If you are not contacting candidates the same day they apply - or if you have a hiring process that involved more than 3 steps - you are meaningfully setting yourself back in terms of getting the best talent in the door.
Interested in a hiring process that will keep your team growing with the right people for 15 minutes a day of your time, contact us to learn more!
