More than 75 organizations have come together to address a major issue: a national shortage of skilled tradespeople.
More than 75 organizations have come together to address a major issue: a national shortage of skilled tradespeople.
The Lowe’s Foundation, a nonprofit funded by the home improvement retail giant, last week launched the Building Futures Skilled Trades Coalition to invest in and improve the country’s workforce of skilled laborers.
Homebuilders say the rising cost of materials used to build homes remains a challenge. Now, another major issue could send ripples through the housing market: a lack of laborers.
For every five skilled tradespeople who retire from the workforce, only two replacements enter, according to the U.S. Department of Education. If this trend continues until 2030, an estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs could go unfilled, leading to a potential $1 trillion in economic losses each year.
“For years, we treated a four-year degree as the default path to a successful career and vocational education or the trades as an alternative path,” Rebecca Henninger, career coach and founder of The Job Girl, tells Realtor.com. “That’s helped to create a perception problem at exactly the same time a large segment of the skilled trades workforce was approaching retirement.”
To address the dire situation, Lowe’s has gathered a group of businesses and organizations that will put their resources together and rebuild this important workforce. The Lowe's coalition brings together top companies—including General Motors, AT&T, Nvidia, and GE Appliances—alongside a network of colleges and trade programs.
The coalition’s goal is to create effective solutions to reach more potential skilled workers, implement proven methods on a large scale, and rebuild an important workforce. Its intent is to train 1 million skilled trades professionals by 2035.
Physical infrastructure will always be a necessary part of economic growth and societal development, Henninger points out. While innovative technology like AI can manage many tasks, they can’t do the physical work that requires skilled tradespeople.
“We tend to think about AI as software, but AI requires data centers, enormous amounts of power, cooling systems, construction, electrical infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance, etc. There’s a workforce underneath all of that,” says Henninger. “The same is true for advanced manufacturing, housing, transportation, energy, etc. We can innovate as quickly as we want digitally, but if we don't have enough people to build, install, maintain, and repair the physical systems underpinning that growth, it very quickly becomes constrained.”
The number of new homes built has already been affected by the lack of skilled tradespeople in the homebuilding sector, according to a 2025 study commissioned by the Home Builders Institute in collaboration with the National Association of Home Builders.
The lack of workers resulted in prolonged building times which, when combined with higher construction costs, exacerbated the housing affordability crisis, the study found.
The shortage of construction workers led to an increase in construction time of about 1.98 months, the study found, with smaller builders facing an even greater delay. Due to delays, approximately 19,000 fewer single-family homes were built than needed, representing an economic loss of $8.1 billion, according to HBI.
“If you’re not building those 19,000 homes, you’re creating a lack of inventory and certainly, that has an impact,” Ed Brady, HBI president and CEO, tells Realtor.com. “And if we don’t have enough labor to build, even in a time that is not as robust as we’d like to see it, then certainly in a robust market, with the lack of labor, you’re not going to build the number of units we need.”
The direct cost of extending construction times adds up to about $2.7 billion annually. This means a total economic impact of up to $11 billion annually is associated with the shortage of skilled laborers, according to the study.
Due to delays, approximately 19,000 fewer single-family homes were built than needed, representing an economic loss of $8.1 billion. (stock image) (Michael Moloney/Adobe Stock) While attracting new skilled workers is a vital mission, proper training and experience are also key to replacing tradespeople who are aging out without deeply hurting the housing market.
“The key to labor is productivity. If a 58-year-old plumber leaves, who could rough in a house in two or three days, and you’ve got a 22-year-old plumber that’s taking a week, five to six days, then you can’t afford to pay them as much in order to keep the house the same price,” Brady explains. “And how you get productivity and good, quality, skilled labor is training. We have to train more people. And we have to train them well, so that they can get into the market and replace that 58-year-old plumber that’s retiring.
“So, it’s not necessarily inflationary when the cost of labor goes up as long as you can produce it faster,” he adds.
Brady agrees that the shortage is due, in part, to the emphasis placed on higher education and four-year degrees taking priority over learning trades. To build up numbers in the construction workforce, education priorities need to shift.
“We need to recalibrate and rebalance where the investment in the education system goes, to put more money and resources into career technical education, in skilled trades, in nursing, in manufacturing,” Brady says. “All of these don't need a college degree. And so, let's not fund those college degrees at a disproportionate amount of the need.”
Bringing in more skilled labor will lead to more houses being built and, hopefully, a more affordable market, Brady says, as long as companies keep working together to invest in a stronger workforce.