Immigration Reform is Key to Building a Skilled Workforce
Reforms to the immigration system are an important component in workforce development, because the immigrant workforce plays a critical role in meeting the nation’s housing needs. In fact, immigrants account for in construction trades, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Ensuring a consistent, reliable influx of new workers is important in an industry that is continuing to grow. Even as we encourage America’s youth to consider careers in the building trades, we must also pursue immigration policies that complement ongoing vocational training efforts and help fill labor gaps to ensure that the nation has a workforce that can meet its housing construction needs.
The Housing Industry’s Labor Shortage
America will need thousands of new skilled construction workers to reduce the nation’s housing deficit — a shortfall NAHB estimates to total 1.5 million homes.
There are currently 8.3 million payroll construction workers in the U.S. Of those, 3.4 million work in residential construction.
Government data show there is a shortage of anywhere between 200,000 to 400,000 workers in the construction industry and that lack of skilled labor slows down the pace of construction, drives up labor costs, and ultimately leads to higher home prices.
Learn more about the industry’s labor shortage.
Related: See a U.S. geographical breakdown of the share of immigrants in the construction workforce.
Policy Recommendations
NAHB supports immigration reform that protects the nation’s borders. In addition, it must:
- Ensure that employers continue to be responsible only for verifying the identity and work authorization of their direct employees — and not the employees of their subcontractors. Read the full NAHB policy.
- Create an efficient temporary construction industry guest-worker program that allows employers to recruit legal immigrant workers when there is a shortage of domestic workers.
Congress can help by seeking sensible immigration policies that preserve and expand existing temporary work visa programs while also creating new market-based visa programs that will accurately match demand with available labor, which in turn:
- Solves the issue of the millions of undocumented workers already in the U.S.
- Makes it easier for people to enter the U.S. to work in the construction industry.
- Creates an employee verification system that gives employers confidence they are hiring legal immigrants.
- Read NAHB’s full policy, Comprehensive Reform of Immigration Laws.
Potential Impact of a Mass Deportation Program
President-elect Trump has discussed implementing a mass deportation program for the millions of undocumented workers in the United States. Although NAHB does not support hiring undocumented workers, anything that provides a shock to the labor force could be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate America’s housing affordability problems.
