The shortage of skilled construction workers is considered to be one of the greatestchallenges facing the U.S. construction industry. Advances in construction equipmentand material technologies, modularized components, and estimating and schedulingstrategies have offset the shortage of skilled construction labor. However, there is aperception among industry leaders that the skilled worker shortage is getting worse. Theshortage of skilled workers poses a considerable threat to the competitiveness of the U.S.construction industry. There have been many reasons offered for the drop in constructionlabor availability from the drop in construction real wages to decline of constructionunions. One other possible reason is a drop in worker satisfaction in construction. Usingdata from the General Sociological Survey (GSS), this paper examines the changes inworker satisfaction among U.S. construction workers from the 1970s, 1980s, to the1990s. Changes in construction worker satisfaction are compared to changes in thegeneral population to examine their uniqueness. The paper also examines how changes inworker satisfaction have occurred in both union and non-union trades. The analysisexamines how worker accomplishment, opportunity for advancement, working hours, jobsecurity, and income relate to job satisfaction and how they are influenced by occupationand education attainment. An understanding of what promotes a construction workers’job satisfaction should improve management’s ability to get the most out of the currentworkforce and increase its size for future needs.
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