My favorite show on television is Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. This guy isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He appreciates those hard-working individuals who work the necessary jobs in our society that, if left unfilled, would bring this country to its knees. Those “dirty” jobs often provide comfortable wages and satisfaction from a job well done. Yet, it is still a challenge to fill those unwanted jobs. I’m reminded of a quote from Ann Landers: “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.”
The construction industry—including our walls and ceilings sector—is seeing an alarming shortage of qualified skilled labor. Current labor shortages in our industry are a result of many different and complicated factors, but Mike Rowe himself identifies the core problem saying, “The flaw in our character is our insistence on separating blue-collar jobs from white-collar jobs, and encouraging one form of education over another.”