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Is the electrician’s craft a vital mainstay of rapidly evolving 21st century construction technology? Or are electricians slowly succumbing to cyclical economic attrition, retirement and societal trends that encourage a lockstep march from high school into four-year college degrees, while discouraging many young people from entering the skilled trades?

Oddly, both these questions hold some turbulent truths spinning in a vortex of socio-cultural and marketplace forces playing out both for and against the next generation of electricians—the boots on the ground for IMARK electrical distributors and electrical manufacturers.

But, no one can say we didn’t see this coming.

Electrical trade associations and industry publications have been banging the drum about the impending electrician shortage since before the millennium. “The very first national Independent Electrical Contractor (IEC) event I attended was a workforce development committee meeting on this exact subject. That was 1996,” recalls Michael Kallmeyer, senior vice president, construction at Denier Electric, a multi-division electrical contracting and construction company in Ohio.

Six years after that IEC committee meeting, Electrical Construction and Maintenance (EC&M) magazine fretted about the coming contraction of the electrical workforce with a series of articles, the last of which was titled “Electrician Shortage-It’s Too Late to Avoid It.” In a subsequent 2007 article, EC&M issued another clarion call about the looming skills gap as the impact of the lack of electricians started to become evident in the marketplace.

“I can remember, not very long ago, when there were a lot of places in the country that were at saturation from a construction standpoint,” says Kallmeyer, a recent past national president of the IEC that has 3,000 members nationwide. “You simply couldn’t build any more. Demand was capped by a lack of availability in the work force.”

Rebuilding theELECTRICIAN WORKFORCE

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DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING

Then, in an unexpected turn of events, big banks securitizing sub-prime mortgages served up the Great Recession, blind-siding and imploding the U.S. and world economies. The construction market tanked and, presto change-o, the coming shortage of electricians morphed darkly into a dearth of electrical work industrywide. Unemployment in the construction industry ultimately soared to nearly 25% in some regions.

During the recession, it was a moot point to ponder an electrician shortage when electrical construction workers were being laid off left and right. “Electricians hit bottom in 2009, 2010, but I think the recession masked the endemic nature of the electrical labor problem,” says Michael Callanan, executive director of the Electrical Training Alliance, an electrical apprenticeship program administered jointly by the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).

Today, with the recession in the rear view mirror and the construction industry beginning to rebound, that mask has fallen away.

“I’d hire 25 electricians today—if I could find them,” Kallmeyer muses. “Construction is really booming in Colorado, and I absolutely see signs of an electrician shortage,” says Spenser Villwock, CEO at the IEC Rocky Mountain chapter in Denver, the IEC’s largest apprentice training chapter. “Our contractors’ back-logs are just getting longer and longer. There’s a lot of bid and contract work, but they’re trying to find the skilled labor to be able to complete the project.”

Callanan, Kallmeyer and Villwock are not alone in their perceptions of the impending lack of electrical workers. According to a 2013 survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America, 74% of contracting and construction firms report they are having trouble finding electricians, plumbers, welders and carpenters.

Once derailed by the recession, the skills gap is roaring back on track and may be coming soon to a marketplace near you.

INDUSTRY RESPONSE

The electrical industry is battling back against this burgeoning labor dilemma on several fronts. Two of the most nationally prominent are the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Alliance and IEC’s Apprenticeship Program.

“The Electrical Training Alliance offers four electrical apprenticeship programs at 300 training centers around the United States,” explains Callanan. Our largest, the Inside

Program, prepares people for commercial and indus-trial work. That program currently has about

23,000 apprentices.”

The Inside Program is a four-year, 8,000- hour, on-the-job training initiative combined

with 1,000 hours of classroom instruction that turns out

licensed electricians. “Our electrical contractor and union local sponsors are responsible for assigning

work to the apprentice, so each apprentice has a job

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while they are doing their related instruction. It’s an earn-while-you-learn model,” Callanan explains.

In a similar approach, the Independent Electrical Contractors have 60 chapters who administer apprentice training with some chapter programs having as many as half a dozen training centers. The IEC is also a major supporter of SkillsUSA, a youth program dedicated to making sure the U.S. has a skilled workforce. This program is aimed at high school and college students who are preparing for careers in a trade or other skilled service occupations.

“We’re in the 8,000 range for all four years of the IEC Apprenticeship Program, although we have very few fourth year apprentices. That’s because if you go back four years ago, 2010, no one was hiring,” says Kallmeyer.

“Apprentices enrolled in the program are sponsored by an IEC contractor and work on a jobsite,” he explains. “They work a 40 hour week with pay and go to school one night a week. The sponsor agrees to keep them employed and provide on-the-job training. They can work full time, earn a living, get training, become a journeyman electrician, and in many cases it doesn’t cost them a penny.”

TRAINING TRENDS UP

Both of these programs experienced depressed enrollment during the recession years, but are now growing. “Currently, the number of apprentices enrolled in the IEC electrician program is trending up,” Kallmeyer reports. “We’re seeing a significant ramp up in first- and second-year apprentices as the economy and the construction outlook improve.”

“The Electrical Training Alliance has more than

31,000 apprentices right now,” Callahan observes. “That number was typically in the 40,000 range. As a result of the recession, we’re still in recovery mode, but enrollment is growing.”

Both apprenticeship programs draw from high school and vocational school graduates, but their demographic mix is diversifying. Villwock reports that the average age of his program apprentices is 23. “But we also have 60 apprentices over the age of 40. These are people who had chosen a career path that, for whatever reason, just didn’t work out. They got to be mid-career, saw opportunities in the electrical field and moved over to start a new career. The majority of them have college degrees,” he says.

“We also have a strong push to recruit former military service men and women,” he continues. “They’re dedicated to the training and the hard work that we value in this industry. Typically the electrical contractors we work with are chomping at the bit to help place military people into their companies.”

The IEC’s Kallmeyer agrees. “Recruiting people exiting the military is a great strategy. They know how to work and get things done as a team. When you get somebody out of high school, part of your training is helping them develop into responsible workers. When you’re dealing with former

military, you can skip that step. You’re just teaching

incredibly disciplined and dedicated people how to be electricians.”

“It used to be the majority were kids coming out

of high school, but now the average age of our appren-tices is 27,” notes

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Callanan. “These are people who may have had some college and are unhappy with their current under-employed state. That drives them to our opportunity.”

THE CHALLENGES AND IMPLICATIONS

Until an incredibly resourceful and physically skillful robot is developed to run wire throughout a building—and that day, if it ever comes, is certainly not near—the construction industry is always going to need electricians. So what’s the problem?

“As a society we’ve raised several gen-erations of American youth who have been told that to achieve the American dream you need to get a four-year college degree,” Villwock explains. “We’ve designed the K-through-12 educational system to reflect that metric for success. The message sent to young people is that if you want to be successful, you need to work from the neck up, and not the neck down, which is entirely untrue.”

“Young people need to have more than one option,” he continues. “That’s how we empower them to thrive. That’s how we support a strong economy. Otherwise, we end up with a lot of people with college debt, 40 percent of whom don’t complete college anyway and end up being a barista at Starbucks.”

Jim Spellane, media advisor at the IBEW concurs. “Undoubt-edly, education is critical to the future of the U.S. workforce and the economy in general, but college is not the only vehicle for delivering the type of learning that is needed for every aspect of our economy.”

“The challenge is a perfect storm of declining numbers of electricians entering the industry, increased post-recession demand finally starting to impact the marketplace and this mentality that the trades can’t offer what a college degree route can,” Callanan says. “In 2008, there were 460,000 registered apprentices in the U.S. Today that number is 350,000. We lost 100,000 apprentices to the recession.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 20% increase in the number of electricians needed in the workforce by 2022, an upturn that is higher than most other occupations. The Bureau places the current number of electricians at 583,500 and anticipates 698,200 electrical workers will be necessary within the next eight years—an uptick of roughly

115,000. Throw in the retirement of Baby Boomer electricians in their 60s, and it is easy to grasp the industry’s impending predicament.

All those interviewed agree that the blow-back from a protracted trade skills gap will have nasty and potentially game-changing consequences.

“Obviously, given supply and demand, labor costs will go up. That’s just a given,” says Kallmeyer at Denier Electric. “I could see a 30% to 40% increase in labor costs if economic trends continue upward at some steady moderate rate. Labor does not have the ability to catch up. As an industry, we can’t create journeyman electricians, or

carpenters and plumbers for that matter, in less than four years. It takes time to build that qualified workforce. It’s simply going to become more expensive to install electrical systems.”

“The other thing I think will happen, because of increased labor costs and the sheer lack of electricians, is that it will slow the response time the construction industry can pro-vide to the marketplace,” Kallmeyer continues. “We won’t be able to deliver on the demands for schedule, for building completions, for project completions, because the labor is just not going to be there.”

With the advent of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology and the rise of pre-fabrication of electrical construction systems, Kallmeyer also raises the specter of off-shoring pre-fab electrical assemblies to low-wage developing countries.

Others interviewed for this article danced around agreement with this point though all, including Kallmeyer, feel it would only exacerbate the electrical labor shortage at home. “No one wants to see this happen,” he says, “but if the electrical contracting industry doesn’t have the ability to deliver on market demands, guess what, the market will go somewhere else.”

“A long-term shortage of skilled tradespeople would be devastating to the electrical industry and the entire nation,” says Spellane at the IBEW. “We would find it hard to effec-tively deliver services such as construction, maintenance and even electric power itself. Economic growth would

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be stunted. Skilled trade work is not easily replaced by technology and automation. Unless we have people with the skills needed, we will scramble to keep up in an increasingly competitive world.”

WORK IN PROGRESS

In spite of those potentially bleak outcomes, Spellane feels like the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Alliance is leaning forward. “There’s no doubt that we’re part of the solution. We’re well positioned and we’re redesigning some of our programs to stay abreast of market needs and technologies," says Spellane.

“The ETA has shown an amazing ability to develop curricula customized to suit the needs of particular aspects of the industry or the market conditions in specific geographic regions,” Spellane continues. “Our embrace of technology has enabled a rapid transition from classroom-only education to blended learning through online courses and technical simulations.”

“I took this job about five years ago, when we were bumping along at the bottom of the recession and there was this attitude of ‘You’re not a college. You’re a trade school, so go hang out over there in the corner.’ No way,” says Villwock in Denver. “In trying to figure out how to attract people into the IEC Appren-ticeship Program, we started doing a lot more public education and outreach to schools, guidance counselors and parents, help-ing them to understand that there’s money to be made and there are sustainable skills in the electrical trade. We’re making progress.”

There is a symbiotic relation-ship between electrical distributors and the electrical

contractors who form the bulk of distributors’ customer base. A diminished number of electricians potentially means diminished work for contractors and diminished sales for distributors. Those interviewed encourage IMARK distribu-tors and suppliers to support apprentice training initiatives at the local or national level.

“Engage in the training at a local IEC chapter,” Kallmeyer urges. “Some of our local independent distributors in Ohio do. Every one of these distributors has someone who’s, say, a really good lighting control guy or a switchgear guy. They can come in and engage with their future customers. If there is a contraction in the electrical workforce, if there are fewer electricians installing electrical stuff, electrical distributors aren’t going to sell as much electrical stuff. It’s pretty simple.”

“We have an electrical distributor here in Denver that is investing a percentage of their annual sales into the recruit-ment of future electricians,” Villwock notes. “That helps us tremendously, in terms of marketing dollars, to get

out there and attract these young people, put on more seminars and get in front of more potential apprentices. Distributors have a stake in the game. They can sit back and armchair it or they can take a leadership role that’s ultimately going to benefit their business and the

industry as a whole.”

“Take the view that we are all connected through the industry and that the success of one segment affects the success of all,” says IBEW’s Spellane “It’s an underlying philosophy by which we all live and work anyway. It’s not just about the apprentices and the journeymen. Think holisti-cally about the industry. Partner with the national

or local apprenticeship programs to make sure that the specific needs of your

market and, more importantly, your business will be met.”