When the Data Can’t See the Whole Picture
A couple years before the Covid pandemic hit, KentuckianaWorks convened a group of construction employers to help shape our Kentuckiana Builds training program. We did this intentionally. Labor market data is an important planning tool, but it doesn’t always reflect what employers are experiencing in real time.
That gap became clear when we shared projections suggesting the region would need only about a dozen additional roofers over the next decade. Employers responded with polite disbelief. They were already struggling to fill positions. The disconnect between what the data showed and what employers were dealing with day to day was hard to miss. The data wasn’t wrong, but it couldn’t see the forces shaping workforce availability as they’re happening.
Why Workforce Gaps Are Hard to Measure
A recent New York Times investigation into the roofing industry helps explain why these blind spots exist. In the 1970s, construction offered a clear path to stable, middle-class work. Young workers could enter the trades, earn solid wages, and build long-term careers. Over time, the structure of the industry shifted in ways that don’t show up neatly in standard workforce metrics.
Union membership in construction declined from about 40 percent in the early 1970s to roughly 10 percent today. The wage advantage that once set construction jobs apart narrowed significantly. Union construction workers, who once earned far more than the typical U.S. worker, now earn only modestly more. Nonunion workers earn less.
As pay, job stability, and working conditions changed, so did who was willing to do the work. Many American-born workers left the trades, while immigrant workers – often working outside traditional employment structures – became an increasingly important part of the workforce. By 2000, some experienced roofers reported being the only non-immigrant workers on their job sites.
Today, the construction industry is short roughly 300,000 workers nationwide, and labor shortages are a leading cause of project delays. These are current conditions, not future projections. But because these shifts happened gradually and unevenly, they’re difficult for forecasting models to fully capture.
What Employers See That the Data Doesn’t
Most labor market projections focus on net job change—how many jobs are added or lost. What they struggle to show are the factors that determine whether those jobs can actually be filled.
That includes the impact of high turnover in physically demanding roles, informal labor markets, and reliance on labor sources that can change quickly due to policy or economic shifts. On paper, employment can appear stable even as employers face ongoing hiring challenges.
Employers see these pressures early, long before they appear in historical trends. This is why employer advisory groups are essential to KentuckianaWorks’ workforce development strategy. We don’t convene employers to confirm what the data already tells us – we convene them to surface what the data can’t yet show.
The skepticism employers expressed about roofer projections wasn’t resistance to planning. It was workforce insight. They were identifying real-time workforce constraints that no model could fully capture in that moment. Strong workforce planning depends on both perspectives. Data provides the big picture. Employer experience gives it meaning.
Join the Conversation
KentuckianaWorks invites businesses across the region to share how they are experiencing the local labor market. Whether you’re a workforce leader in construction, healthcare, manufacturing, or another industry facing talent challenges, your insight helps reveal dynamics that statistics sometimes miss. You see the skills that are getting harder to find and the pressures reshaping your labor supply well before they appear in official data. Planning for tomorrow’s workforce means listening closely to the people hiring today. If you’re ready to share that perspective, contact KentuckianaWorks to learn more about becoming one of our industry advisors.