This article has been updated since its original publication.
A Georgia Construction Outlook survey conducted by an accounting and consulting firm in collaboration with Kennesaw State confirmed in February that officials at 83 percent of the state’s privately-owned construction companies have become concerned due to the labor shortages from subcontractors.
Bennett Thrasher, Atlanta’s eighth-largest accounting firm, collaborated with Kennesaw State’s University’s Department of Construction Management to conduct the survey. Chair of Kennesaw State University’s Department of Construction Management Khalid Siddiqi and Bennett Thrasher’s Construction Practice provided benchmarking data for both the state’s general contractors and subcontractors.
According to the GCO survey, the categories in which the survey’s results were based upon include compensation, recruiting and retention strategies, profitability, healthcare costs and benefits, innovation, business challenges and project backlog.
Scott Hazy and Tom Jollay, co-leaders of Bennett Thrasher’s Construction Practice, said that this is Georgia’s third annual construction survey. They said that the survey is considered groundbreaking given the constant increase in the number of participating firms.
Siddiqi said that, despite challenges of recruiting and retaining individuals due to the labor shortages, seeing more organization, dedication, innovation and technology to address this particular issue has been helpful.
“The labor shortage has become increasingly acute over the last three years. It’s no surprise that recruiting and retaining qualified individuals remains the top challenge for the construction industry,” Siddiqi said.
Based on the results of this survey, 38 percent of the respondents have projected a major increase in revenue by 2020, which creates a marginal increase of 78 percent compared to last year.
Additional results include a 32 percent profit increase compared to last year’s amount equivalent of $45,289 per full-time employee.
Also according to the survey, 83 percent of companies that were surveyed said that recruiting and retaining qualified employees was the top challenge for them, which included graduating construction management majors from KSU.
An average of 67 percent of these companies are family-owned. Individuals are said to have a recession plan in place following these labor shortages, according to the survey.
Despite having a slightly lower average salary increase compared to last year, salaries have not reflected the companies paying out higher bonuses and other benefits.