Pub. 2 2019-2020 Issue 1

22 HIRING WOMEN S olving any problem requires looking at as many possible solutions as you can. When the problem happens to be a labor shortage, that means looking at as many potential employees as you can. The more diverse your pool of potential employees is, the easier it will be to find the right person for the job. Experts estimate a need for 1.6 new skilled workers in the construction industry by 2022, but 75% of the members of Associated Builders and Contractors said they had a shortage. Who will fill that shortage? That’s an excellent question. Unless asphalt companies include many more women in the job pool of potential employees, however, the chances are good that many of these jobs will continue to go unfilled. Very few women currently work in the asphalt industry. Of the 10% of women who worked in the construction industry in 2018, there is a subset of only 7,000 women who work in the asphalt industry. That’s a ridiculously low number when you consider how many women there are in the U.S. who either have or could receive the training to become valuable team members. According to Statista, the U.S. had 161.48 million men and 168.08 million women in 2019. Those numbers are expected to shift to 167.08 million men and 173.9 million women by 2024. When more than half the population of the U.S. consists of women, any industry that fails to hire more women than in the past is actively handicapping itself in the job market by ignoring more than half the pool of potential employees. Why are the numbers of women in the industry low? Experts cite the following factors: • Hostility • Lack of mentors • Sexual harassment • Stereotyped assumptions None of these factors are acceptable. All of them can be changed. DIVERSIFYING BY