It’s not just because my favorite movie of all time is Rocky. I’m talking about the first movie of the series that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1977. It’s because I find distinct similarities between the movie, Rocky, and the current employment situation in the construction industry.
If for some inexplicable reason you don’t know, Rocky was a prize fighter who was down on his luck. Through circumstance and a little luck, he gets a shot at fighting for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. The underlying theme was that Rocky had all the potential to be a good, if not great, fighter. He instead “became a leg breaker, to some cheap, second-rate loan shark” due to a lack of support.
As we reported in Forester Daily News to you last week in this press release from the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), the association released a recent survey that showed 86% of contractors reported trouble filling hourly or salaried professional positions. And this is happening amidst a long awaited surge in construction projects. There’s a lot of potential here, but not a whole lot of support. Since the end of the recession, older, experienced workers have been retiring, but there have only been a small number of younger workers to replace them. According to the AGC, officials or educators have not been doing much to encourage careers in the construction industry, let alone provide the necessary training and development programs.
AGC officials added that these shortages appear to be having an impact on the sector’s recovery and urge federal, state, and local officials to act on the measures outlined in the association’s Workforce Development Plan to reinvigorate the craft worker training pipeline.
Stephen Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer says, “While construction employment increased in more than two-thirds of the states over the past year, these gains may fade in the near future unless the industry can attract more people to try construction as a career.”
So the construction industry, like Rocky, might fight the good fight. It may even go the distance, like Rocky. And like Rocky, after all that effort, it doesn’t win the title. But the story doesn’t have end there. Redemption could be found in the association’s Workforce Development Plan. Think of it as Rocky’s training regimen. If we follow it, the construction industry could find the same kind of happy ending as there was in Rocky II.
And I’ve seen that movie, too.
