Future Workforce

‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ – this is true in all areas of life, especially in construction. The decreasing availability of skilled labor on job sites is now driving the demand of technology that aims to augment human labor and how resources are managed. One of the primary drivers in the need for advanced robotics is an industry-wide shrinkage of the availability of skilled labor. This issue can be split into two mutually exclusive components: a significant rise in the median age of skilled workers, and increasingly massive investments in infrastructure and real estate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average age of construction workers in the United States is currently 42.5 years old, compared to 39 in 2000 as illustrated in the BuiltWorlds Robotics Top 50 Report. 

Inversely, the growing demand of a skilled workforce in construction has been beneficial to the industry’s utilization and advancement of emerging technologies and evolved business strategies. This Future Workforce analyst call will examine how the built environment is adjusting to and benefitting from workforce shortages through labor augmentation robotics, advanced training strategies and cutting edge human resource management infrastructures.