That’s more than triple what he built a few years ago, when “you couldn’t buy a job” in the residential construction industry, he said.

 

Now, builders can’t buy enough workers to get the job done.

 

Eight years after the housing bust drove an estimated 30% of construction workers into new fields, homebuilders across the country are struggling to find workers at all levels of experience, according to the National Association of Homebuilders. The association estimates that there are approximately 200,000 unfilled construction jobs in the U.S. – a jump of 81% in the last two years.

 

The ratio of construction job openings to hiring, as measured by the Department of Labor, is at its highest level since 2007.

 

“The labor shortage is getting worse as demand is getting stronger,” said John Courson, chief executive of the Home Builders Institute, a national nonprofit that trains workers in the construction field.  Read the rest of the article on fortune.com