Warner’s company is unusual. Because it specializes in green building, it is apt to attract a unique type of employee. But mainstream custom building companies also have become refuges for workers fleeing the white-collar world. In staffing his Glendale, Wis., design/build firm, Alan Freysinger usually hires designers with straight architecture resumes. His carpenters, though, are arriving via more circuitous paths. “One of our best carpenters is a guy who has a chemistry degree,” Freysinger says. Another came with a business background. “There are not a lot of young guys going into carpentry,” he explains, “and it takes six or seven years to get good at it, to be able to do all the things you need to do.” The result is fewer carpenters moving through the traditional pipeline than are needed to replace workers who age out of the business. That puts a squeeze on custom builders, who are looking for the cream of the crop, but it creates opportunities too. “It’s a supply-and-demand cycle,” Freysinger says. “The upside of the labor shortage is that wages have been driven up, so that people with an education can come in and make a living.”
But should people really have to reach a white-collar dead end before they consider the building trades? Freysinger participates in high school career-day programs, where he has noted a disturbing lack of interest in building and other hands-on careers. “There are a lot of kids who don’t see it as an option,” he says. “It’s not considered a sexy kind of work.” To many parents, the trades represent a lower rung on the ladder of success. The popular culture reserves status and glamour for white collar and professional work. The effect is to steer away from the trades most young people with college prospects, even those who might be happier wearing a tool belt. “There are a lot of people that get great satisfaction out of making something with their hands,” Freysinger says, and they need not take a vow of poverty to do it. “One of our best carpenters is a guy who went right out of high school and into carpentry. He likes what he does, and we pay him very well.” In fact, he probably makes as much as his buddies who went to college, and he has just as good a shot at someday owning his own business. “It has to get back to the mainstream that this is a great profession.”
“Unfortunately there are few middle class and upper middle class guys going into construction,” agrees Solana Beach, Calif., custom builder Terry Wardell. The good news is that when the right people find their way to custom building, whether as a first career or a do-over, the business still knows what to do with them. “Some guy has the talent that’s going to make him a great finish carpenter, though he’s never going to be a manager. Some guy’s got the spark, who’s going to be able to lead.” Things get sorted out; whatever their resumes say, people settle into roles in which they can contribute. “And they tend to love the lifestyle.” In Wardell’s market, the labor gap is increasingly filled by recent immigrants, he says, “And they fit those same roles.” It was like that when he started in the business as a kid more than 30 years ago, “And I have those same guys today.”
Where will the next generation of your business come from? Tell the editors of CUSTOM HOME what’s on your mind. Send your comments and questions to Bruce Snider at bsnider@hanleywood.com.
