Substack author The Emergent City, who writes about Australian housing policy, says that low supply of skilled tradespeople and construction workers is slowing down new construction of housing. In part, those is because there are other major building projects (non-housing) that are bidding for their services. Is insufficient supply of tradespeople/construction workers a big issue for US housing policy?
This is a great question. There is some evidence that there is insufficient supply, quoting Glaeser and Gyourko 2025:
“Real construction costs increased by 25% over the past two decades. A large fraction of the employees and establishments in the homebuilding sector left the sector after the GFC.”
But it is something we would love to dig more deeply into.
Substack author The Emergent City, who writes about Australian housing policy, says that low supply of skilled tradespeople and construction workers is slowing down new construction of housing. In part, those is because there are other major building projects (non-housing) that are bidding for their services. Is insufficient supply of tradespeople/construction workers a big issue for US housing policy?
This is a great question. There is some evidence that there is insufficient supply, quoting Glaeser and Gyourko 2025:
“Real construction costs increased by 25% over the past two decades. A large fraction of the employees and establishments in the homebuilding sector left the sector after the GFC.”
But it is something we would love to dig more deeply into.
Thank you for the suggestion on coloring! We can definitely produce you a map of the Minneapolis-St Paul Metro area. Running the code right now :)