USF Policy Lab Projects

Bargaining for Better California Construction Jobs

Faculty: Jesse Antigua-Hughes, Economics
Students: Steven Dinh, Journey Lajos, Dafine Rizvanolli, George Russell
Community Partner: California Center for Construction Economics & NorCal Carpenter's Union 

California Center for Construction Economics & NorCal Carpenter's Union 

While many California policy makers have rightly focused on eliminating regulations limiting the supply of new housing, there is growing evidence that health of the construction labor market is in crisis state. Low pay, poor benefits, and arduous working conditions in construction jobs act as a bottleneck in production, while receiving comparatively little attention from policy makers. These declines in quality have knock-on social effects on factors ranging from higher rates of disability to lower health insurance coverage, and combine with other notable disamenities such as usual work hours and long commute times to limit California's construction workforce, burden construction worker families, and keep quantities of new housing low and prices high. 

For the project USF Economics joined with the Center of California Center for Construction Economics (CCCE) to quantify and summarize key economics aspects of the carpentry and broader construction labor force in California, especially as they relate household and worker well-being, with a key focus on market power (monopsony) and impacts on construction worker families. Doing so will both better inform the CCE in its research and public education agenda as well as better equip the CCCE to advocate for policies and improved benefits and pay.