Diversifying the Building Industry Can Help Solve the Labor Shortage
A severe skilled labor shortage is impacting our industry’s efforts to address housing affordability and to keep up with growing housing demand. Adding more women and other underrepresented workers into the field can be a big step that helps to solve the issue.
As part of Professional Women in Building (PWB) Week 2022, experts will join a free online shop talk, How to Prioritize Diversity in the Residential Construction Industry (Microsoft Teams link), today at 2 p.m. ET.
Amy James Neel, workforce and contracting equity manager at Portland Community College and a carpenter by trade, and Dr. Charner Rodgers, a licensed general contractor, development director, business diversity at McDonald's and vice chair of the NAHB Student Chapters Advisory Board, will share real world strategies to implement in your workplace that prioritize diversity.
“The construction industry is experiencing a crisis-level shortage of workers. Discounting or devaluing women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) workers is an expensive and risky business decision,” said Neel. “Research demonstrates that firms with more diverse talent benefit from greater innovation, better problem-solving and stronger creativity and insight than homogenous crews. The answer to a host of challenges our industry faces lies in developing the cultural literacy to successfully recruit, train and retain non-traditional workers.”
The conversation will be moderated by Juli Bacon, president of JB Consulting and 2017 NAHB PWB Council Chair.
In addition to the shop talk, the PWB Week Toolkit suggests highlighting women leaders that prioritize diversity at your local council using the social media hashtags #PWBWeek and #PWBProud.
Thank you to exclusive PWB Week sponsor Lowe’s Pro.
Latest from NAHBNow
Oct 23, 2025
IBS 2026 Exhibit Home Aims for Groundbreaking Energy-Efficiency RatingFor anyone curious about how far today’s innovative building products can take a home’s performance, The New American Home 2026 is the must-see showcase at the upcoming Builders’ Show, taking place Feb. 17–19.
Oct 22, 2025
NAHB Generates Enthusiasm for the Trades During the Big BuildNAHB recently introduced thousands of students to the skilled trades during The Big Build event at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
Latest Economic News
Oct 20, 2025
Non-Conventional Financing for New Home Sales Loses Ground in 2024Nationwide, the share of non-conventional financing for new home sales accounted for 31% of the market per NAHB analysis of the 2024 Census Bureau Survey of Construction (SOC) data. This is 1.7 percentage point lower than the 2023 share of 32.4%. As in previous years, conventional financing dominated the market at 69.3% of sales, higher than the 2023 share of 67.6%.
Oct 17, 2025
Better Growth, Larger Deficits: CBO Fiscal OutlookThe Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a key nonpartisan score keeper that measures the effects of policy changes by the Federal Government. With several policy changes since January of this year, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), stricter immigration, and higher tariffs, the CBO updated its economic projections through 2028.
Oct 16, 2025
Amid Market Challenges, Builder Expectations Rise in OctoberEven as builders continue to grapple with market and macroeconomic uncertainty, sentiment levels posted a solid gain in October as future sales expectations surpassed the 50-point breakeven mark for the first time since last January.