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Seventy-four percent of Texas construction companies say they are having a hard time finding hourly craft workers, like carpenters, electricians or plumbers.
That's according to a survey released Wednesday by the Associated General Contractors of America.
In Houston, 11 of the 14 companies that responded have that problem. That's despite construction being down here.
"Houston went from one of the fastest-growing, if not the fastest-growing construction job market to a market that's more stable at this point," Brian Turmail with AGC said.
He said last year, Houston added only 400 construction jobs. Austin, San Antonio and Dallas all added at least 1,000 during that time.
Neil Eldin, dean of the College of Technology at the University of Houston, said the shortage in skilled construction workers has long been a trend. That's why the building slowdown here in Houston hasn't considerably affected demand for more workers.
"Even if you take that demand off because of the huge deficit that we have – deficit in workers, deficit in crafts numbers that we needed – then you are still facing shortages," Eldin said.
He said the problem has been growing for the last 30 to 40 years nationwide, in part because the construction sector has had to compete with jobs in manufacturing and the growing tech sector.
The Associated General Contractors propose bringing back construction education in high schools and call for immigration reform that would increase the pool of legal workers.