The Bay Area’s construction industry labor shortage has persisted.
That’s according to trade union leaders in the area. Rapid growth and the expansion of the technology industry have helped to create building projects and contributed to higher costs of living in a state ranked second-highest in the nation.
In Redwood City, two summer camps are trying to chip away at the shortage by introducing young people to the trades before they enter the workforce. Future Construction Leaders’ Camp Teen Girls Silicon Valley and the Redwood City Heavy Metal Summer Experience teach students hands-on skills while trying to make construction feel more accessible to girls, young people and students who may not have considered the field.
But the camps are only a piece of a larger problem. Trade leaders and organizers said the shortage is also shaped by high housing costs, poor retention and job-site cultures that have not always made women and younger workers feel like they belong.
Henry Funcke, outreach and rotation coordinator for Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 104, said this has forced many industry professionals to other parts of the state and dissuaded them from taking jobs here.
The shortage is nothing new. Immediately following the 2008 Financial Crisis, 630,000 construction jobs were lost, according to the New York Times, and the industry would go on to lose about 1 million workers. In California, there has been about a 4% decrease in the number of construction workers since January 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
To some, the issue is less about a lack of interest in pursuing construction jobs and more about high living costs and poor retention of women and young people in the field.
“(The labor shortage is) not the problem; it’s a symptom,” said Amanda Luchetti, founder of the Skilled Project, a media platform. “We got to look at structurally how are we retaining women, how are we ensuring there’s bathrooms for women specifically on site, those are big issues still across the United States.
“If we’re going to send women into these careers, we got to also put pressure structurally on ensuring that they stay and they can grow and have the support to do that,” she added.
Luchetti noted that women make up 11% of the construction workforce and are leaving the industry three times the rate of their male counterparts. Future Construction Leaders’ Camp Teen Girls Silicon Valley, which finished its second year of programming in June, is one group working to address such issues.
The free camp, on which Luchetti sits on the committee, teaches eighth to 12th grade girls “basic skills of carpentry, tile setting, electrical, solar, plumbing, surveying, and heavy equipment operation,” according to its website. For her, camps like these are important in building confidence among girls to eventually enter the workforce.
“Auto shop or welding, or some of these other programs that used to be vocational programs in high schools and even middle schools, have been cut and pulled,” Luchetti said. “Some of them are coming back in California, … but there’s still a massive gap, and so being able to catch some of these kids earlier in the education journey to build confidence (is key).”
For Luchetti and Jagu Patel, FCL Silicon Valley’s committee chair, seeing campers empowered to pursue careers in the trades and find fulfillment through the camp has been especially rewarding.
“I had a parent come up to me, … the mother was crying, and she was like, ‘(For) my daughter, school is not her thing, and we just had no idea what she was going to do. This camp helped her realize, I’m going to go into trades,’” Patel said.
Funcke stressed the importance of such kinds of outreach and how construction unions like his are working to engage the younger generation.
“We’re now getting real busy again, and we’re bringing people in, but partly due to all of the union trades now going out and providing (outreach),” Funcke said. “It’s not just myself doing outreach, you have iron workers, electricians, a lot of career fairs, a lot of career presentations for schools and the schools are getting very proactive about having people come in and talk to some of their (students).”
Funcke, who was involved in the Redwood City Heavy Metal Summer Experience, said such opportunities are valuable to show students what professional options are out there. HMSE, a non-profit working to teach high school students about the construction trades, is another organization hoping to address the labor shortage.
“I think the construction industry realizes that they need to, one get more diverse, meaning that their percentage of underrepresented people are less than it should be. They also, a while ago, … started realizing they need more women in the trades,” said Angie Simon, president and co-founder of HMSE. “It’s just been a slow gain. Inclusion and feeling like you belong is something that the construction industry is working on now. They need to make the job sites feel more inclusive, they need to make people feel like they belong there.”
Luis Valencia, a senior at Menlo-Atherton High School who attended HMSE, felt the camp helped instill hands-on skills as well as educate participants on lesser-known parts of the construction industry.
“I learned a lot of things that honestly I would have never thought was in the trades,” Valencia said. “The trades aren’t shown as much as before, and it’s a good career to go into. So letting young students and kids dip their toes in the water is a super great thing to do, especially in the Bay Area. … There should be more things like this.”
Part of that effort for HMSE has been collaborating with the Sequoia Union High School District. The camp was brought to Redwood City when Simon was approached by Faith Velschow, the school district’s work-based learning specialist. .
“The kids had a great experience, they loved it so much, the looks on their faces, and the things that they were telling me,” said Velschow, who also helps organize the school district’s Career Technical Education courses. The CTE program offers 25 pathways for students including topics such as woodshop, engineering, graphic design and cooking.
“I think what they felt was there weren’t that many opportunities to learn about how do I get into the trades, how do I follow this pathway that I’m interested in, and so I think (HMSE) was a great first exposure for them to see something different that they knew less about,” she added.
While organizations like FCL and HMSE are working to address the labor shortage by engaging young people in an industry where more people are leaving than joining, the issue remains complex.
Another factor is who already makes up the construction workforce. The National Immigration Forum, a D.C.-based immigrant advocacy non-profit, said in a 2024 report that about 40% of California construction workers were immigrants. That means concerns about immigration enforcement can add another strain to an industry already grappling with high housing costs, retention and recruitment.
“It is important to make sure that there is an understanding that the industry is open to anybody who’s interested in the trade, and traditionally it has been a male-dominated industry, and having a group of girls exposed to the different opportunities, … is really impactful for them to be able to see that this is an opportunity that they could explore as well,” said Robert Skelton, director of marketing and community engagement for Rebuilding Together Peninsula, a non-profit offering free housing-related repairs.mute farther and farther away. … It’s an urgent need to make sure that we take care of the people that are not the top income earners and who can’t readily afford the premium prices of housing that we are currently seeing.”
