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Weekly UpdatesNot so many years ago, the notion that Alaska was facing a shortage of construction workers was, like global warming, not universally accepted as a call to action. Today, several regions of the state are well past the talking stage in efforts over time to hook up area youths with rewarding, high-demand jobs. Training and education programs are forming a network capable of flexing the state's growing infrastructure muscle.
Despite its cyclical nature, in Alaska, construction has long been seen as a solid career field-second, perhaps, only to the oil and gas industry. While in 2005 employment in the field represented only 6 percent of the labor market, over the last decade it was the fastest-growing segment. It's credited with accounting for about 7.5 percent of the $25 billion approximate annual gross state product.
JOBS TO FILL
Trouble is, the worker growth rate hasn't been keeping pace with projected need. Public-private community partnerships involving contractors, unions, legislators, banking and media interests, as well as educators, have been lining up to support targeted work force development. By now, the focus has moved to delivering useful training and assuring that real jobs are available and accessible.
So a young person looking in 2007 for a career in Alaska could do worse than look at the construction trades-especially, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty.
"For young people," Richard Cattanach, executive director of the Associated General Contractors (AGC), says, "'it's a great opportunity." Construction workers in Alaska average about $60,000 a year, although they may start at less than half of that.
But not just anybody can walk into these jobs. A certain level of skill is required, and it's different from what it used to be. Math skills-adding fractions and reading a tape measure accurately--go with the territory, Cattanach emphasizes. Knowing how to read blueprints and technical specs helps. There are the "soft skills"--having a good work ethic and arriving to work on time. And in the information age, when operating engineers are bridging remote communication challenges more easily, computer skills don't hurt, either.
While many of these jobs won't require a college degree, with the skills today's work force requires, finishing high school may be key, Cattanach says. Testing required by unions generally calls for some understanding of geometry and trigonometry, he says. "If kids have the aptitude and desire, they can get into it, but if they don't stay in school, it's just tougher."
While nationally 28 percent to 29 percent of high school students don't graduate-Anchorage tends toward the trend-the dropout figure for Alaska as a whole is 40 percent. Of those who do finish high school in the state, 70 percent don't go to college, Cattanach says. And of those who do go to college, half don't graduate.
While the state is seeing some of the largest growth in construction since the pipeline days, he says, it's not enough. "We need 1,150 new workers a year for the next decade," he trumpets, and that's not counting such mega-projects as a natural gas pipeline. And the Murkowski administration's past goal of 90 percent Alaska hires in the state is further expected to reduce the nonresident portion of the work force from 17 percent to 10 percent by 2010, he says.
So trade unions like his, contractors, local school districts, the University of Alaska and other state agencies are doing the spadework to prepare the actual and potential workforce-students, the unemployed and the underemployed-with the kind of training that will help make them competitive for the available jobs.
"We're just providing the raw material," Cattanach says. "It's up to the employer to shape that into a contributing employee-one who makes them money and not costs them money."
Still, "a rising tide lifts all boats," he adds. The benefits to the state as a whole should accrue broadly.
GENERATING INTEREST
Part of the consciousness-raising challenge may be that the idea of a construction-worker shortage is sort of anti-intuitive in a "Men in Trees" state like Alaska. You'd think maybe plenty of young folks wouldn't mind working up a sweat.
Many factors play a role, including a graying work force where the retirement age ranges from .53 to 55.
Rick Rios, coordinator of career and technical education for the Anchorage School District, assigns much of the blame to U.S. education trends that had vocational education "in a downward spiral for 20 years."
A shift in the 1980s and 1990s toward greater emphasis on academics-preparing students academically for college-helped fuel those high dropout rates, he says. "Strictly academics at the high school level has made everything else less relevant."
The college push, coupled with the unavailability of relevant training opportunities, has posed a double whammy for those not inclined to continue in school. "They don't see the relevance," says Rios, "and they drop out."
It got so bad, around the turn of the century, a national survey of career fields for young people put construction 247th of 2.50 fields, with only exotic dancers and migrant farm workers behind construction workers, recalls Bruce Pozzi, an Anchorage PR man, who put it succinctly: "It's hard work, and they wanted soft and easy."
Nevertheless, surveys of young people in the Fairbanks and Anchorage areas in recent years found more than 60 percent held positive views of the construction field. A television advertising campaign has proven successful at improving that image.
"There will always be a stigma between going to college and having a college track, and being a skilled worker," Rios said. "That will always exist."
There will always be people (including parents) for whom there is no success outside of going to college. Yet, Rios points out that fewer than 20 percent of all employability in America requires a college degree.
What has clearly changed, in his view, is that skilled labor today is demanding a level of technical skills rivaling that required by many college programs. So the lines are blurring.
"Our concept of estimating is so poor," he reflects, "because we have allowed computer technology to do our thinking for us rather than our precision work."
"The times when one skill could carry you through a lifetime career are gone," he says. "Globally, that has changed."
EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES
In the sprawling Anchorage school district, where about 15,000 of the 50,000 students are in grades 9-12, King Career Center has been helping to fill the void for decades. Annually, Rios says, about 7,000 students will take at least one class from among the district's designated 27 career pathways, including culinary arts, construction, emergency disaster-relief services, auto body and computer electronics.
Juniors and seniors from other high schools in the district who want to explore certain careers or earn high school and/or college credit travel to King Center for morning or afternoon sessions during normal school hours. After school, the new "Third Session" offerings launched last fall present introductory courses in an abbreviated format at no charge for a half credit (a third of what they'd get for a regular daytime session course) to all high school-aged students on a first-come, first-served basis.
The new "pathways" push helps students receive secondary and postsecondary credit concurrently, for example, in college or apprenticeship programs. Vocationally, Rios says, facilities and programs are moving toward expanded options with greater visibility. But transportation and dedication of time to off-site education still represent barriers.
Career academy programs in communities around the state represent another tier of services for young adults who are no longer in high school. A $1 million state grant is helping train young people in Anchorage Career Academy classes, also held at King Career Center, but after traditional school hours. Partnering in the effort, besides the school district and AGC, are the Department of Labor, the Anchorage Homebuilders Association and Alaska Works Partnership.
In the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, another Construction Career Academy is teaching carpentry and forklift skills in the fastest-growing community in Alaska.
Construction career academy efforts tying jobs to training have been influential for years in smaller projects in rural Alaska. Programs have taken place in St. Marys, Bethel, King Salmon, Klawok, Ninilchik and Delta Junction. Local and regional organizations put their heads together on designs, and training is based on the outlook for construction jobs in regional trades.
"The constraining factor," says Cattanach, "is jobs."
While the model has taken hold firmly in Alaska, similar efforts are under way in other areas of the country where shortages are anticipated.
In Fairbanks, UAF's Tanana Valley Campus, in partnership with the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, is offering after-school career-exploration classes in energy and construction for high school students at the Interior Alaska Career Academy. They'll include diesel technology/welding and applied mining/ operating engineers. A fourth class will be offered solely for students at Fairbanks Youth Facility. The state Department of Labor is investing $70,000, and partners include carpenters, laborers, operating engineers and mining interests.
At UAA, a new four-year program in construction management is being funded in part with $25,000 ($5,000 a year for five years) from First National Bank Alaska.
"Construction students leave Alaska to complete their bachelor's degree and are often heavily recruited by outside firms," says Elizabeth Setzer, First National vice president and an associate member of the AGC. "And Alaska firms now must look outside the state to hire qualified people."
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