37 ms·

The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector

206 points by ren_engineer 4y ago

hindsightbias 4y ago
> number of houses or total square footage built per employee Average house size has probably doubled in the last 50 years. Nail guns can't make up for building code and higher finish work demands. It's not uncommon to see 6 or 7 layers in sheathing today.
- latchkey 4y ago
  I'm remodeling my place right now. You're totally right, the building codes are a lot more complex and there is more 'work' to do as a result. No more just hiding electrical boxes in the walls. Heh. That said, the products being used have improved a lot. Things like PEX tubing for plumbing (instead of copper) and glue on walls for showers (over doing tile work), make some aspects go a lot faster. Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention vinyl plank flooring... omg, so easy and the results look and function great.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The big builders like DR Horton and Lennar target build times of 100 days per home that meets minimum code requirements, which is pretty good productivity. A community of 100 homes can be up and running in 2 years.
    - nradov 4y ago
      And that 100 days target is mainly for achieving optimal efficiency. If you want to optimize for time it's totally possible to go from an empty lot to a finished house in under a week, provided that all the workers, inspectors, and materials are available.
    - dumpsterlid 4y ago
      [dead]
    - conductr 4y ago
      Requires a ton of overhead at the planning / pre-construction phases. That’s only amortized out if you built a ton of volume which these do. It’s also why you may only have a choice of 8 floor plans even though it’s a neighborhood of 500 homes.
  - matwood 4y ago
    PEX is great. I highly recommend keeping some shark bites and spare pieces of PEX around, as it's easy to do repairs on your own if you have an issue.
    - joezydeco 4y ago
      I live in an area where the plumbing is soldered copper and the wiring is all in steel conduit. PEX, ProPress, Sharkbites, Romex... it's all just a little scary to me.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        I seriously can't recommend this guy enough for general repair/building work... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q/vid... Friendly, super knowledgable, takes the fear out of the DIY. For electrical, I do a lot myself, but when it came to running a 50amp line + breaker panel inside my place (which also required outdoor ladder work) to replace the steel conduit indoors, I just hired a professional even though it was very expensive.
        joezydeco 4y ago
        It's not the DIY aspect^, it's the idea of ProPress joint sitting pressurized behind a wall for a decade. ^ I'm knowledgeable enough to do my own wiring and plumbing, but pay for licensed/bonded contractors instead. I sleep better at night and my insurance company probably does as well.
        latchkey 4y ago
        Up to you, but it honestly really isn't that much of an issue and I'd trust a simple properly crimped joint (which is easily visually inspected with a simple tool) a heck of a lot more than a welded one that is impossible to see what the inside looks like... um, did I put the right amount of flux on? did I know to use the 1/2 of solder to 1/2 of pipe trick? As far as insurance companies... I bought an old place... I'm finding all sorts of stuff that isn't up to code (hidden electrical boxes, in the floor!, with wire nuts and not even twisted together wire and not even grounded properly)... I'm bringing it up to code, with modern products... in a court of law, it is going to be hard for them to argue against me.
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Copper is superior. I specifically went out of my way to find a house with large swaths of the plumbing done with copper. Pretty neat to have anti-microbial properties built in.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      Copper inferior for productivity, which is what we are talking about here.
    - _Adam 4y ago
      My pipes are all copper, and the hot water contains a non trivial amount of lead (from the solder used to join the pipes). I had it tested - around 20 ppb. We don't drink or cook with the hot water, but in theory if the plumbing was PEX we could.
      - Der_Einzige 4y ago
        What year was your house built? I really hope this is not a risk on things built after 2000 (or 1980?)
        Spooky23 4y ago
        Lead flux went away like 45 years ago. But sometimes galvanized pipe has some amount of lead in the zinc coating, and a mixed cooper/galvanized installation can accelerate corrosion. Post-Flint, lead is the new asbestos. Because the standard is zero tolerance, there’s alot of noise on the topic. PEX is great, but I’d personally always go for cooper if I could afford it. We tend to learn new things about plastic and risks over time.
        kube-system 4y ago
        From 1986-2011 the EPA/congress defined "lead free" pipes as containing no more than 8% lead. In 1996, they banned plumbing that is not "lead free" from being sold. In 2011, the "lead free" definition was strengthened to a weighted average of 0.25%.
      - 4y ago
  - switch007 4y ago
    Those glue on walls seemed to be priced at “we know how much tiling costs”. £36m2 (cheapest I could find on a site similar to Home Depot) for some composite plastic seems crazy. They have some double that price too.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      Yes, they know the value and have priced accordingly. ~$800usd vs. tile+labor. Definitely a product that is ripe for disruption. There aren't even many manufacturers.
      - runnerup 4y ago
        > Definitely a product that is ripe for disruption. There aren't even many manufacturers. These two statements may be related. It’s not worth deploying capital to compete if the additional competition drives profits margins to zero. Better to deploy that capital somewhere it gets better expected returns. This anti-competitive logic seems very widespread these days with such centralized global supply chains and consolidated retail chains. Not a lot of room for me to deploy a small amount of capital to create a small-medium sized manufacturing facility of this stuff to chip away at 10-50% of the demand around the edges of the marginal profits. Mainly because it would be difficult to get my products into Home Depot and Lowe’s if I can’t supply their whole national chain. And that’s assuming Home Depot and Lowe’s haven’t agreed to any exclusivity with the current manufacturers which I’d need private equity money to beat.
        latchkey 4y ago
        You're right on all fronts, my only comment is that there is a lot of room for product improvement though. $800+ for 3 sheets of plastic, and that is it, is absurd. They don't even interlock or have trim for the corners... example... https://www.homedepot.com/p/WOODBRIDGE-Haydon-32-in-x-60-in-x-96-in-Solid-Surface-3-Piece-Easy-Up-Adhesive-Alcove-Shower-Wall-Surround-in-High-Gloss-White-HWP4300/314842961 https://www.homedepot.com/p/WOODBRIDGE-Haydon-32-in-x-60-in-... Of course adding those items would cost even more, so it is a bit of a race to zero. That said, if you can get a following by homebuilders and into every single new housing project, it might be worth it. I'm sure having some sort of inside track advantage there would be necessary too. None of which I personally have, but as an end user of this stuff, I'd be more than happy to support and provide feedback on.
  - frankus 4y ago
    The great thing about PEX is that they made an expensive* tool that makes joining pipes like 90% less skill-intensive. I'd love to see something similar done for electric wiring. I'm picturing something like an electrical box that you can directly connect Romex that's been stripped with a special tool, and then a circuit-breaker-style snap-in for the actual receptacle. The parts/tools would cost more but might dramatically speed up the installation. *relatively expensive, especially in the early days.
    - mike50 4y ago
      Hubbel already makes this. https://www.hubbell.com/wiringdevice-kellems/en/Products/Electrical-Electronic/Wiring-Devices/Straight-Blade-Devices/SnapConnect-Receptacles/c/2027718 https://www.hubbell.com/wiringdevice-kellems/en/Products/Ele...
      - latchkey 4y ago
        Neat but the speed up here just doesn't seem that extreme, I guess maybe if you're installing 10k of these a day. I feel like the time it takes to put the wires into the harness is just as much time as putting them straight into the receptacle and tightening the nut. I did start using wago's though... those are handy for sure.
  - RetpolineDrama 4y ago
    >Things like PEX tubing for plumbing PEX is terrible, pretty much every commercial brand has been shown to leech petrochemicals into your water. This varies a lot based on your municipal water supply's characteristics. Unfortunately cleaner water leeches more. PEX saves megabuilders $$$ and plumbers time, but it's not good for you.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  I have no idea how much it affects the data used to make that calculation, nor how much is its relevance in the US, but here (EU, Italy) besides the building code improvements there has been a very noticeable increase in amount/complexity of electric and hydraulic/heating/conditioning installments.
- belval 4y ago
  Pretty sure this is the right answer and calling this "worker productivity" seems a bit harsh. A "Pretty Good House" (book that was on the front page last week) includes insulation above and below the foundation slab, vapour barriers, double studs to break thermal bridges, complex window installation (again thermal bridges), air exchangers and heat pumps with ducts (or mini-splits). New constructions (for cold zone), need to be air tight and that certainly comes at a cost in time as it is work to apply all the layers, run the conduits and whatnot.
  - kodah 4y ago
    I have no data to back this observation up, but everyone (especially in the media, but also in corporate life) is attacking "worker productivity" lately. Everyone's got a reason, but when you dig into them they all stink.
    - spamizbad 4y ago
      It's a convenient narrative. We're all suffering because the workers are too lazy!
    - dougmwne 4y ago
      Yeah those lazy builders need to stop working from home and put on a damn tie!
    - dumpsterlid 4y ago
      [dead]
    - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
      From the mouth of CEOs it's clear they're trying to wrestle back low wages and unpaid overtime using shame. Especially out of touch when they bad mouth their own subordinates and think it doesn't reflect poorly on themselves. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/marc-benioff-says-newer-salesforce-employees-are-less-productive.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/marc-benioff-says-newer-sale...
      - deleted 4y ago
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  Isn’t the real headline then that building construction technology hasn’t improved at the same rate as other manufacturing tech? For example, cars today are orders of magnitude more complicated than 50 years ago, but due to more efficient manufacturing technology, the auto industry has far higher productivity per employee than it did 50 years ago.
  - softfalcon 4y ago
    I believe this is why we're seeing some of the industry starting to experiment with pre-fabbed homes that are modular but can be constructed using the automation we see in car manufacturing. The weak link in creating ever more complex homes, with ever more stringent building codes, at faster rates, is to remove the "humans with nail guns and drills" from the construction process. At some point, us meat sacks are the weak link in optimizing an industry. Humans can only go so fast. That's why (as you've said) we've seen massive gains in productivity for other manufacturing industries.
    - ryanSrich 4y ago
      > I believe this is why we're seeing some of the industry starting to experiment with pre-fabbed homes that are modular but can be constructed using the automation we see in car manufacturing. Are they doing anything different than what was available in a Sears catalog 50 years ago?
      - elil17 4y ago
        Yes, the manufacturing methods used in the factories are different today. For example, you can now have all the boards nailed together by robots. Other things are still the same. Electric wiring, for instance, is still a largely manual process.
    - mywittyname 4y ago
      Manufactured homes have been a thing for decades now. The problem with them is that their efficiency gains don't scale. It's relatively cost effective to produce a single-wide trailer, but not so much when producing cookie cutter two story homes with basements. For American-style suburban homes, it's most efficient to build most of the home on site, and only manufacture off-site a handful items like roof trusses. People might not realize this, but a small crew can frame several houses in a single (very, very long) day.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  > Nail guns can't make up for building code and higher finish work demands. It's not uncommon to see 6 or 7 layers in sheathing today. Yeah pretty much this I suspect. The paper doesn't propose that more regulations and complex code is why it's harder to build things today. And that's not a bad thing - code is a great thing since it sets a standard. Houses from 100 years ago, a carpenter could just make game time decisions regarding things that are highly scrutinized today like staircase run/rise, doorway height, etc. If you gut an old house it's amazing how simple they are. The old saying "they don't build them like they used to" applies here. We don't because we can't and when they did they overbuilt them because they were simple and it wasn't documented what the build had to be.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Also everything that is built needs regular inspection while in progress. When the frame is put up it is typically inspected to ensure it meets code and that correct fasteners and brackets are used. Until the inspection is done you don't see roofing and electrical finished up. Then you have the electrical and plumbing on top the foundation. And when that is in its inspected again. Also heating cooling piping. Then fiber insulation is put in walls, then you have your drywall installed. Then you have the different finish teams come in. Finish plumbing, cabinetry, tiling, floors. And then another round of builder inspection. Then you get to the city and bank inspections. Any one of the inspections or the specilaty teams running slow can push the whole project back. If your AC ducts aren't in you can't drywall for example.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      > Also everything that is built needs regular inspection while in progress And this is a very good thing indeed. One thing I really love about the system here is we have detailed code and objective inspections based on it. Creates safe structures that can be planned and priced and immune to bribery.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  Higher proportion of apartment blocks (almost always higher cost per sqft, with the tradeoff being lower land use) also seems likely to be an issue.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Youre exactly right. The average new home has twice the square footage it did in the 70s. [1] [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/ https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...
- fortylove 4y ago
  >6 or 7 layers in sheathing today. What do you mean by this?
  - hindsightbias 4y ago
    https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/insulation/crash-course-in-control-layers https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/insulation/c...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - fortylove 4y ago
      Ah, thanks for the response. My confusion is that in American building, the term sheathing usually just refers to the outer layer of plywood that nails to the studs. Edit to add: this really hasn't changed all that much in the past 100 years. Our house is over 100 years old, and is built very similarly to a modern stick framed house, with the exception of not having insulation (when built), and with the sheathing being planks instead of plywood. Also, the lath&plaster interior walls were a lot more involved in making than modern drywall finishing.
- conductr 4y ago
  Homes are architecturally more complicated than the ranches and bungalows of the past as well. This increases the time spent on each job significantly.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  There's the theory that building codes are used similarly (and complimentarily) to zoning laws to limit the supply of new housing (and therefore raise property values). A great example being fire walls and mandatory self-latching doors between garages and living spaces - definitely a logical thing (cars and their gas are flammable, so let's isolate them from the house). When you look at the data [0], garage fires are 2% of residential fires because cars don't really catch on fire in garages (fires happen in garages, but usually because of intentionally set fires getting out of control) So now, in the midst of a housing affordability crisis (or a the end of a great run for real estate, depending on your outlook), we have construction workers using special fire-resistant drywall (that must be cut specially and cannot have holes in it), placing solid steel doors, and generally spending a lot of hours and materials building spaces that people don't even live in, when really, adding smoke detectors in garages solves the problem. [0] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i12.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i12.pd...
  - asdff 4y ago
    This even extends to stuff added to builds that are mandated by law and have little reasonable justification. For example, a city might demand all new apartment units need to have a balcony, and all new apartment buildings might need to have some open courtyard space. Now you've increased the cost per unit by a huge amount by mandating these balconies and also the unrentable voidspace.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      And this is part due to the fact that real estate has to (at least in part) be valued on hypothetical replacement cost. Can’t have apartment buildings reading hands for $100mn when a new one costs $20mn (or have the land sell for $80mn when you only allow 2 stories to be built on it).
  - rovolo 4y ago
    The 2% is a bit misleading because the fire severity depends on how well it's contained. ~50% of fires are "confined" to an object, mostly cooking fires inside pots. Garages are 5% of non-confined fires, which is similar to living rooms (6%) and attics (5%) [0]. The numbers also go slightly up when apartment buildings are excluded[1], taking garage fires to 6% of non-confined residential fires. [0] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i2.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i2.pdf [1] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i6.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i6.pdf
LatteLazy 4y ago
A number which is hard to define and impossible to measure should not be treated as a fact.
- LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
  They're measuring exactly what they want to measure to draw the conclusion they were looking for.
greenthrow 4y ago
This is absurd. Houses are so much more complex than in the 1970s, and so much larger. In 1972 central AC was not common, now it's basically required. Square footage is way higher. Number of electrical outlets and switches per room. Moulding and trim are expected in many houses. Porches, decks, patios are much more ornate. Today's average house ia closer to the house of a millionaire in the 1970s than the average house from that time.
- bgentry 4y ago
  From https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning : > By the late 1960s, most new homes had central air conditioning So the addition of central HVAC likely isn't a big factor, because most new homes in the US already had it 50 years ago.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Eh, not 100% sure if it's a good comparison or not. Mid century homes with central hvac were typically poorly designed from my experience leading to over/under heated rooms. Modern systems typically have a much better designed return air system (hence more piping) rather than a single return at the unit.
- croes 4y ago
  Would be interesting to compare the regulations for building construction now and then.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  I'm not sure I would say much of anything is more ornate today compared to prior. Especially if you actually look at the details of the craftsmanship, anything of "standard" quality of times past are high-end details now.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry. This is clearly accurate - people are not buying the cheapest housing in the middle of nowhere. Instead, the most money is spent in cities which are already built up and are more difficult to develop further.
anonreeeeplor 4y ago
Corruption was a massive problem in USA industry as well as slowdowns due to legal red tape. My guess is incompetent government is at the root of the problem. The more you scale red tape, the harder it is to do anything. Look at the California high speed rail. Corrupt governments make far more money by slowing down a project and using it as a washing machine to extract rents. Getting large public projects to misspend their funds on red tape, lawyers and other while delaying building is way more profitable than just letting any construction project simply get the job done fast. The corruption of the government itself and hybrid with larger construction companies very likely incentivized slow and never complete construction. Why would you want the work done fast when drawing it out and slowing it down is far more profitable, to milk it forever:
- markus_zhang 4y ago
  Red tape in many cases is simply an excuse for more corruption or stronger interest groups IMHO. It puts a legal stamp on a lot of things so that ordinary people cannot argue that. That also makes me think that SWE should either break all those red tapes or put up their own. Nowadays they are simply being milked by everyone else who is behind a red tape or a stamp or a certification or something similar.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >It puts a legal stamp on a lot of things so that ordinary people cannot argue that. Ordinary people can argue it. They'll just get argued back at and mired by the other 50% of people who will knee jerk defend the government and the government and the interest groups will laugh all the way to the bank.
- Mechanical9 4y ago
  With respect to incompetent government, I like to share this opinion whenever possible: The US government and US state governments are incompetent due to constant gridlock. Incentives of politicians within our governments are similarly to draw out all processes since employment is not based on performance or promises kept, but is instead guaranteed for a fixed amount of time. Politicians can continually base their re-election on the fact that "the system is broken", while they themselves are doing nothing to fix it or are not able to do anything to fix it. Having separately elected house, senate, and president is a primary source of gridlock. Each body can reject a legislative change, while none can effectively create change. The only way laws can be passed in this system is under a very rare set of conditions. When those conditions are present (government shutdown imminent, filibuster eliminated, plurality requirements reduced) you see large omnibus bills pushed through as fast as possible, without time to adequately vet the details. From an engineering perspective, this would be like pushing a few massive commits every few years rather than making regular bug fixes as needed. As such, our laws are buggy and unmaintained. Unfortunately, this leads many to believe that regulations generally are ineffective rather than the poor implementations of such being ineffective. Poorly written legislation puts more pressure on the judicial system to litigate between the lines. This is an externality that is extremely expensive for every individual and company to have to deal with. I advocate for a more parliamentary style system where politicians continued careers are based on their effectiveness and continued approval rather than fixed terms. There are plenty of ways to ensure proper checks and balances without stopping government dead in it's tracks.
AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
Safety is our number one priority. Not efficiency.
- avelis 4y ago
  Those two aren't mutually exclusive IMO.
  - CodeWriter23 4y ago
    When you have to re-anchor your safety harness to move 5 feet it's kind of difficult to maintain efficiency.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      When you have to close the site and scrape someone's brains up it's really difficult to maintain efficiency.
      - baremetal 4y ago
        Construction safety laws are written in blood.
      - CodeWriter23 4y ago
        Indeed. BTW my comment was not anti-safety.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Feel-good rallying cries like this make for cheap virtue points but are completely meaningless in a reality where pretty much nothing is a binary choice with a low number of variables. For example, it's easy to sit in an air-conditioned office and say "thou shalt not overload the trucks" but when you actually drag your ass to somewhere you can observe the conditions in which the per-load work is being done it becomes clear that much analysis must be done to figure out if more trucks at 80k is in fact safer than fewer trucks at 120k.
a-r-t 4y ago
Houses were much simpler 50 years ago. The building codes have changed a lot since then and modern houses have added construction complexity with better waterproofing, air sealing, fire proofing, bracing, and more advanced mechanical systems.
- markus_zhang 4y ago
  However many modern homes use inferior material for the job comparing to the older homes in the same area. Probably to cut cost. I'm not sure if it was also the case for older homes built in the 50s/60s though.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Can you give an example of inferior material?
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      I can: - Vinyl windows compared to old growth wood windows from 100 years ago. - Vinyl siding compared to cedar shakes. - Extremely poor wood quality in the lower end 2x4 and 2x6 lumber. - Sheathing that's essentially cardboard in really cheap builds. - Flooring is sad today in cheap to moderate homes. Thing is there were really badly built homes 100 years ago and they just aren't standing any longer. We do get a but of selection bias when we compare old homes. The ones that are still standing were probably built well and of quality materials and have been taken care of. You can build an awesome home today out of excellent materials like engineered wood, high quality OSB/ply/ZipSystem, and of course whatever you want to spend on flooring, siding, windows, etc.
      - rsynnott 4y ago
        Note that there's some selection bias to those 100 year old windows. The houses built cheaply a century ago aren't around anymore.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
croes 4y ago
Maybe there is a correlation "Worker injuries and illnesses are down—from 10.9 incidents per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.7 per 100 in 2020." https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats
- nobodyandproud 4y ago
  Are undocumented workers also tallied?
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    If they were there would be documentation, right?
    - nobodyandproud 4y ago
      I have no idea when and how worker injuries are reported, which is why I asked.
legitster 4y ago
> And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry. So... basically high-rises and mobile homes? It's hard not to see this as a direct result of city councils universally loathing oversized housing blocks.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
That graph looks an awful lot like the one for GDP vs Wage Growth.
- nanocat 4y ago
  I came here to say that ^^
- jessaustin 4y ago
  Good point! For those who haven't noticed the most important fact about the USA economy: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2015/06/24/lagging-long-term-wage-growth/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
Kukumber 4y ago
The pay and the working conditions are miserable, plus the society doesn't value hard work anymore
- feoren 4y ago
  "Society doesn't ___ anymore" statements are nearly universally bullshit.
  - troupe 4y ago
    Society doesn't make true statements about society anymore.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    that explains the current situation, it's all bullshit :clown_face: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/construction-worker/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/construction-work... https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/web-developer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/web-developer/sal...
    - Kukumber 4y ago
      people in this website have a hard time with factual data, everything that goes against their narrative is downvoted, it's funny, reality check incoming soon enough
      - feoren 4y ago
        It's not worth trying to explain to you why two data points illustrating an effect that has been true for all of human history is not evidence that "society does not value hard work anymore", so you get downvoted instead. Did the robber barons of the 1800s pay their rail workers well? Did Medieval European feudal lords pay their serfs well? I'm not saying the current situation is ideal, I'm saying "society doesn't value hard work anymore" is 100% bullshit. What is my narrative, exactly? You seem to think you know. I'd love to hear what it is.
rqtwteye 4y ago
Easy. Have them to daily standups, sprint planning every two weeks and a day of retrospective and soon their producticity will be rockin'.
- winrid 4y ago
  We also need to break the tasks down to smaller units. *George, instead of just putting up this wall, can you have a ticket and close it for every board you put up?*
  - VLM 4y ago
    Even better, we could base hiring on solving word search puzzles containing workplace words to select the best of the best construction workers, and maybe some trivia tests.
    - unsupp0rted 4y ago
      I mean word puzzles and trivia tests won't select the best construction workers necessarily, but it'll help us select for the dedicated and smart ones, who really put the gumption into grinding LeetBrick.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  Make sure to have them point out each task ahead of time and then get upset if they take longer than the allocated points
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    also, get upset if their estimates are too high. They are agile, they should finish things faster
scythe 4y ago
It doesn't seem like an uncorrelated observation that "construction worker" is one of the most undesirable occupations, alongside "janitor" and "line cook". If it's a terrible career, only the people lacking options will choose it. Housing, healthcare and education are the three sectors infamously outpacing inflation in the modern economy. In the latter two, workers usually have at least a decent, if not good, career prospect. Construction, meanwhile, is considered a gig for noncitizens who can't be hired in the regular economy — notwithstanding the special subsets like electricians and plumbers. Part of this likely has to do with the incredible amount of unemployment risk faced by a construction worker; construction volumes may plummet in any region at any time, forcing workers to move hundreds of kilometers away or change jobs entirely. Worse, these fluctuations are often correlated among regions, practically guaranteeing that many builders will be out of a job in downturns. Education and healthcare, at least, suffer almost none of this, despite other stressors. One mitigation may be a sort of "Keynesian public housing" apparatus: while the populist thing to do is to call for public housing when prices are at their highest, this just puts more strain on a squeezed construction market. But if the state picks up the slack during downturns by specifically building small, affordable-type (if not explicitly subsidized) units, it may maintain employment volumes and (long-run) prevent lower-class pain during housing booms, while the units built will not directly compete with the sort of large & luxurious housing built by the private sector.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry. This is a nice way to say "NIMBYs have made sure building anything in areas where there are jobs is a herculean task"
exabrial 4y ago
It's not construction worker productivity so much as building codes complexity has increased 40%.
pirate787 4y ago
In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force. They are a quarter of some construction labor categories. Perhaps using undocumented subcontractors may play a role in lower productivity growth (cheap, unstable, and relatively unskilled labor) or maybe just distorting the statistics. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EW-Construction-factsheet.pdf https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/...
- huevosabio 4y ago
  This is an unlikely hypothesis. Most likely explanation is just that we have been burdened with infinite amount regulatory busy work.
- alexfromapex 4y ago
  Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing
  - a-user-you-like 4y ago
    You mean inflating the currency to hell has negative consequences? Shock.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    It cannot be the case that “all expenses” have grown faster than inflation (which is what real wages takes into account).
    - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
      All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Either way its a pay drop.
      - rahimnathwani 4y ago
        GGP referred to 'real wages', and implied that they've increased.
avelis 4y ago
For general US construction, there are single-source cost-plus service contracts. Which incentivizes construction to do only the necessary and charge the max possible for it. In contrast, a concrete milestone service contract with re-bid sections of the contract that miss their milestones can create a competitive construction landscape. Things I am omitting. Red tape slowing down construction. Changing the incentive structure can probably help boost efficiency on the provider side.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  I thought Cost Plus incentivise people to do unnecessary work? Since getting x% of "plus" on top of a huge messily, error filled contract is more than a lean efficient one?
  - avelis 4y ago
    I think contract organization aside. If the government says it's a requirement the vendor will charge the max it can and accomplish it no matter what. So, in practice vendors have accountants on staff that will work a contract in such a way that logistically allows the vendor to charge the most it can for the contract.
mistrial9 4y ago
supply-side blame-game
jedberg 4y ago
They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. Also, does this paper take into account increased regulations? Both the time spent complying with new building codes as well as the time spent waiting for inspectors?
- eklitzke 4y ago
  If it's twice as much finishing work it's also twice as much "fast" work (the first 80%). The ratio of time spent between the easy stuff and the hard stuff shouldn't change, at least not just based on a square footage change.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Until you consider central heating, multiple bathrooms, far more electric outlets, and then multiple inspections of the above by different groups. Modern homes are far more complex.
- gruez 4y ago
  >They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. I don't see the point you're making. Houses are twice as big, so they require twice the amount of finishing work. If productivity was growing or staying the same, you shouldn't get less productivity as a result of that.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    The finishing work takes longer now because of the complexity.
Giorgi 4y ago
I wonder how Chinese compare, I bet they doubled.
- VLM 4y ago
  Famously, their inspection infrastructure and regulation boils down to "buyer beware" so its going to be an apples to oranges comparison.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  Probably hard to say because you can't trust any answers from the propaganda machine.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Do the Chinese actually build much single family housing?
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  And I bet most of them are empty. And will be forever. See also "Chinese ghost towns": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in...
blacklion 4y ago
I wonder, how injuries and death on construction sites have changed at this period.
wonderwonder 4y ago
Wonder how much of it is related to contractors underbidding to win a contract and then saying they need more money which slows everything down. Or just throwing a bid out without really doing the due diligence required to understand what needs to be done. For example the New York tunnel project that's billions over cost and years behind. I see this every time I hire a contractor to do work on my house, every experience is terrible and over cost and behind schedule. Currently looking to raise a sunken living room due to flood risk. I have a room that is connected to the sunken living room that is raised currently via a wooded frame. The dry wall is open so its clearly visible. There is clearly open space under the floor lift. Guy gives me a quote, I was very clear when I met him that I needed under the side room filled as well and that the goal was to prevent water seeping in due to the floor being lower than ground level. I have him come out again because I am ready to hire him but want one more walk through. I ask what the risk or complication is pouring concrete under the raised side room and the existing floor lift system. He acts surprised and says it was not part of the quote. I ask the complexity of pouring the concrete behind the fireplace because there is a gap behind it and the wall. He acts surprised and says its not included. All of this was clearly visible when he came out the first time and the stated goal was to raise the floor to prevent water seepage due to height discrepancy inside and outside. He says he would have to demo the giant fireplace... My prior experience I had a contractor that I was working with who kept telling me that the crew was at the house working and I had to call and tell him over and over that no one was there. For months... They do this nonsense every single time, they submit a BS quote just to get the job figuring once they are in they can just charge whatever and figure it out. I have yet to meet an honest or competent contractor.
- pixl97 4y ago
  If you have a contractor looking for jobs, at least recently, it's likely they are a terrible contractor. The good contractors tend to be booked out for months
- linuxftw 4y ago
  Have you considered what you're asking for is not practical? Nobody is going to attempt to pour a slab under an existing structure through a hole behind a fireplace.
ajross 4y ago
Note that this is using a counterintuitive definition for "productivity". Most comments here are taking it to mean that construction projects get less stuff done (foundations dug, concrete poured, etc...), but it's actually measuring it as an economic value in units of "value added per full time worker". That seems to be rather more related to the distribution of capital than work output. If the construction industry were getting more efficient, you'd actually expect its margins to be declining, right? I don't think this is measuring what people want it to measure.
- VLM 4y ago
  A plumber can charge $15K to install a new sewer line, both in 2022 and in 1972 (inflation adjusted). However, an increasing fraction of money is likely being spent on lower margin lower productivity "construction". I'm sure faux paint finishes look nice, and they are expensive, but they're not "replace a sewer lateral" expensive. Thus its inevitable the overall market segment will become less productive if it expands. The "mistake" in the linked article is assuming all construction work is equal and unchanging over those decades where CLEARLY there have been infinite real estate fads over the decades. There's just no way replacing countertops with granite can generate as much financial productivity as sewer work, and the fraction of the market spend on low-profit countertops is vastly higher now.
antman 4y ago
Having worked in a construction site in another country my observation would be that we used to have countless undeclared labor for tax reasons anf now we have countless divided by two... Now working as an analyst it is important each time to have a ground knowledge and business expert to avoid obvious measurement biases. Especially when comparing different eras.
eagleinparadise 4y ago
CRE guy here. A lot of this "productivity loss" is also due to government related staffing issues and bureaucracy. Most people are describing more complex building codes, so I'll add something new. I had a project that was delayed by over a year during Covid because the city approved incorrect plans, came back and requested revisions, and then lost the physical plans (without us knowing until we checked in asking what the status was). This was almost a year delay and added cost overruns, etc. It also made the required rent higher to recoup those costs and try to be profitable (that deal will lose money). Remember, there's someone at the city working 9-5pm clocking in and out.. they are not impacted if the project is denied, delayed, etc... while the developer is incurring cost of capital of 7-10%. Another example of bureaucracy: you have to go through a particular order of inspections when developing property. One of them includes elevator inspections. You have to have power before that, so that's another set of inspections. IIRC, during Covid there were only something like half a dozen elevator inspections for the entire state of CA. The source below says there was 15 in 2019. If your elevator inspection is 2 months late... guess what, your project is going to be late. https://laist.com/news/elevator-inspections-los-angeles https://laist.com/news/elevator-inspections-los-angeles Remember the modular startup Katerra that gobbled money from Softbank? I knew a developer who did one of their projects. He said Katerra would deliver the units on time, but the city's permitting process was so broken that they couldn't actually install or inspect these units. So they would have to find lots to store the material (+costs & +issues). Katerra's "value-add" was the speed of delivery would cut costs down, but in reality this was hard to achieve "on-site".
- runnerup 4y ago
  > made the required rent higher If, all along, you could have rented it out for more money ... why were you planning to rent it out for less money? I get that you wouldn't have to, but it appears that the "market rate rent" was higher than you initially anticipated. As a corollary, assuming that you had initially planned on the highest rent that the market would bear...it seems that after a year of unexpected delays you'd most likely still choose to finish the project even at a loss. This is because all the loss would have already been sunk cost that you can't change anymore, and at the "original maximum rent the market would bear" you'd still make your IRR/ROI on the marginal future investment of finishing the construction. So, assuming you couldn't raise the rent, you'd lose money either way, but you'd lose less money by finishing the construction vs. losing more money by abandoning the project entirely.
Dig1t 4y ago
Speaking specifically about the construction industry in California, because I am very familiar with that topic: Labor is less skilled, because of huge supply of undocumented workers. Also building codes and requirements for building safety have increased tremendously. Building a house in CA is WAY more complex than it used to be, since there have been so many requirements added to building codes over the years. Arguably CA houses are better built than they used to be, but the flip side is that it takes more time and experience to build one correctly.
- parineum 4y ago
  > Arguably CA houses are better built than they used to be This is inarguable. The aftermath of the major earthquakes of the past have had an very noticeable effect on building safety and the effect on damage done has been measurable. I can't imagine there aren't similar trends in other places for their own local natural disasters.
winrid 4y ago
I think we are focusing too much on the individual worker and not the process/new building laws/bureaucracy that is slowing us down.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tonymet 4y ago
Does any government office work on efficiency? I can think of local , state, federal offices working to slow things down, but none working on speeding things up.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Standards across the industry in theory should increase efficiency. Problem is homes are highly customized quite often. Add to that home building is very boom/bust. The county I live in currently has 1900 homes in progress. A year from now if the market goes down that number could be 100. Trying to scale things that have regulated and licensed inspections is massively difficult. And the answer is not let the builder do whatever because whatever almost always equals screwing the buyer.
  - tonymet 4y ago
    that's not universal, some will slow things down and some may speed things up.
tomrod 4y ago
Worker productivity is meaningless if the secular trends (read:code requirements) increase in complexity over time. This analysis approach and outcomes are garbage, in my professional opinion. While I generally appreciate Dr. Goolsbee's research, here the causality as presented here is seriously off. The assumption is that the productivity has decreased. However, the factors of this aren't a shift in the supply curve, but rather an increase in labor supply willing to perform the work more cheaply in real terms and increased complexity in construction codes. Add to that the actual materials have been engineered to improve productivity, and I think you have a complete picture. It would be accurate to say the output of the median construction employer has changed, but that accounts all the above factors. What Goolsbee is claiming is that the productivity curve has decreased, and I don't think that is true.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think it's an accurate way of looking at it but not the only one. Different company goes from making 10 widgets and 10 hours to One widget in 10 hours plus paperwork, that is a productivity loss in terms of widgets. Sure, and entirely misses any difference in quality certification of the widget. However, the point that you are fewer widgets per hour still stands. It is a starting point for further questions. For example, Do you really need all that paperwork for the widgets? In this case the analysis was conducted on housing square footage built and we are building less per hour. If we accept that we can ask further questions.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    The issue is the attribution. Here, workers are attributed (even at a high level, consider the title). But it's not the workers, it's bad policy and bad management.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Think a lot of people on this thread are making the mistake of confusing attribution and blame. If you tie a worker's hands behind their back, you will have low worker productivity. A spade is a spade. Asking why workers have low productivity is an entirely different question. People seem Primed to assume that anyone saying workers are unproductive means that they're lazy. This is obviously not the case. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should know that low worker productivity is not a root cause itself. I don't think that the article claims this at all. Furthermore, if it is the case of bad management or is some in this thread claim bad regulation, you can't determine that without first demonstrating a decrease in worker productivity. Bad management is bad because it causes lower worker productivity.
bradwood 4y ago
Safety standards have also improved which I expect has had a negative impact on productivity. Remember this? https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/11/11/arts/11LUNCH1_SPAN/11LUNCH1_SPAN-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/11/11/arts/11LUNCH1_SPA...
patientplatypus 4y ago
This isn't all that surprising. I mean, it's surprising a priori, but not post hoc when considering the social culture of the United States. Construction is a job that you go into if you've been to prison, haven't gone to college, or are an undocumented laborer. It attracts those people who are the least skilled in the country because it's a hard job that's hard on your body, pays little, and is intellectually uninteresting (compared to most college educated middle class jobs). The people who make money in the industry have to go through onerous licensing requirements and have the skills necessary to run their own business and take on the risks of having that business fail, which most people (myself included) don't have. That's managing payroll, licensing, taxation (and avoiding taxation), sales, marketing, and all the rest of it while still being able to be a master plumber or what have you which can take 10 years or more. And even then you can be making 70+ hours a week or have to be on-call for emergencies (as a plumber), only be able to get work during certain times of the year (summer for a large amount of construction), or be away from home for long periods of time (if you have a specialized skill such as oil drilling or specialized skills in setting concrete and so forth and have to travel across the country to where the work is). I've worked day labor in construction. After only a few months my hands are messed up to the point where some days it hurts to type after longer periods of time. Have you ever had to carry dry wall, lumber or sheet rock for 8 hours a day for minimum wage? It's boring and it hurts. I'm currently unemployed and homeless. I'd rather be unemployed and homeless than do construction again. A year of that and my body would fall apart. As a society we've made the industry as unattractive as possible so what do you expect?
bnolsen 4y ago
Building techniques haven't really improved much (steel framed houses go up faster, use less materials and are cheaper). I guess tools side stepped, with battery operated tools being about like air tools for efficiency. Why the drop otherwise?
rcme 4y ago
How do you measure the value add of a full-time construction worker?
TimPC 4y ago
I think you have to find a measure that looks at build times for apples to apples projects. It’s entirely possible more fine-detail work goes into the excessive amount of luxury units we now build and that this time consuming work explains a large portion of the effect. We can also look at regulations that improve safety and see that they slow down labour productivity as well. Not saying we should get rid of those regulations just saying they explain some of the decline.
bparsons 4y ago
It is called occupational health and safety rules. You can't (legally) work people to death anymore.
intrasight 4y ago
I still say measurement/approach error. The article defines productivity as "value add per unit of input". The only measurement of "value add" that makes sense it the sale price. Given how high are those prices are, I don't see how "productivity" could not be super high.
shadowtree 4y ago
Pretty sure worker health has improved - so this is OSHA making sure you have proper safety procedures, staffing, gear ... which all makes slapping together the Empire State Building in a little over a year now impossible. Which is a good thing! Watching the videos touring China skyscraper build quality makes you appreciate building codes in the West as well.

206 points by ren_engineer 4y ago

> number of houses or total square footage built per employee Average house size has probably doubled in the last 50 years. Nail guns can't make up for building code and higher finish work demands. It's not uncommon to see 6 or 7 layers in sheathing today.

latchkey 4y ago
I'm remodeling my place right now. You're totally right, the building codes are a lot more complex and there is more 'work' to do as a result. No more just hiding electrical boxes in the walls. Heh. That said, the products being used have improved a lot. Things like PEX tubing for plumbing (instead of copper) and glue on walls for showers (over doing tile work), make some aspects go a lot faster. Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention vinyl plank flooring... omg, so easy and the results look and function great.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  The big builders like DR Horton and Lennar target build times of 100 days per home that meets minimum code requirements, which is pretty good productivity. A community of 100 homes can be up and running in 2 years.
  - nradov 4y ago
    And that 100 days target is mainly for achieving optimal efficiency. If you want to optimize for time it's totally possible to go from an empty lot to a finished house in under a week, provided that all the workers, inspectors, and materials are available.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]
  - conductr 4y ago
    Requires a ton of overhead at the planning / pre-construction phases. That’s only amortized out if you built a ton of volume which these do. It’s also why you may only have a choice of 8 floor plans even though it’s a neighborhood of 500 homes.
- matwood 4y ago
  PEX is great. I highly recommend keeping some shark bites and spare pieces of PEX around, as it's easy to do repairs on your own if you have an issue.
  - joezydeco 4y ago
    I live in an area where the plumbing is soldered copper and the wiring is all in steel conduit. PEX, ProPress, Sharkbites, Romex... it's all just a little scary to me.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      I seriously can't recommend this guy enough for general repair/building work... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q/vid... Friendly, super knowledgable, takes the fear out of the DIY. For electrical, I do a lot myself, but when it came to running a 50amp line + breaker panel inside my place (which also required outdoor ladder work) to replace the steel conduit indoors, I just hired a professional even though it was very expensive.
      - joezydeco 4y ago
        It's not the DIY aspect^, it's the idea of ProPress joint sitting pressurized behind a wall for a decade. ^ I'm knowledgeable enough to do my own wiring and plumbing, but pay for licensed/bonded contractors instead. I sleep better at night and my insurance company probably does as well.
        latchkey 4y ago
        Up to you, but it honestly really isn't that much of an issue and I'd trust a simple properly crimped joint (which is easily visually inspected with a simple tool) a heck of a lot more than a welded one that is impossible to see what the inside looks like... um, did I put the right amount of flux on? did I know to use the 1/2 of solder to 1/2 of pipe trick? As far as insurance companies... I bought an old place... I'm finding all sorts of stuff that isn't up to code (hidden electrical boxes, in the floor!, with wire nuts and not even twisted together wire and not even grounded properly)... I'm bringing it up to code, with modern products... in a court of law, it is going to be hard for them to argue against me.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Copper is superior. I specifically went out of my way to find a house with large swaths of the plumbing done with copper. Pretty neat to have anti-microbial properties built in.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    Copper inferior for productivity, which is what we are talking about here.
  - _Adam 4y ago
    My pipes are all copper, and the hot water contains a non trivial amount of lead (from the solder used to join the pipes). I had it tested - around 20 ppb. We don't drink or cook with the hot water, but in theory if the plumbing was PEX we could.
    - Der_Einzige 4y ago
      What year was your house built? I really hope this is not a risk on things built after 2000 (or 1980?)
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        Lead flux went away like 45 years ago. But sometimes galvanized pipe has some amount of lead in the zinc coating, and a mixed cooper/galvanized installation can accelerate corrosion. Post-Flint, lead is the new asbestos. Because the standard is zero tolerance, there’s alot of noise on the topic. PEX is great, but I’d personally always go for cooper if I could afford it. We tend to learn new things about plastic and risks over time.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        From 1986-2011 the EPA/congress defined "lead free" pipes as containing no more than 8% lead. In 1996, they banned plumbing that is not "lead free" from being sold. In 2011, the "lead free" definition was strengthened to a weighted average of 0.25%.
    - 4y ago
- switch007 4y ago
  Those glue on walls seemed to be priced at “we know how much tiling costs”. £36m2 (cheapest I could find on a site similar to Home Depot) for some composite plastic seems crazy. They have some double that price too.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Yes, they know the value and have priced accordingly. ~$800usd vs. tile+labor. Definitely a product that is ripe for disruption. There aren't even many manufacturers.
    - runnerup 4y ago
      > Definitely a product that is ripe for disruption. There aren't even many manufacturers. These two statements may be related. It’s not worth deploying capital to compete if the additional competition drives profits margins to zero. Better to deploy that capital somewhere it gets better expected returns. This anti-competitive logic seems very widespread these days with such centralized global supply chains and consolidated retail chains. Not a lot of room for me to deploy a small amount of capital to create a small-medium sized manufacturing facility of this stuff to chip away at 10-50% of the demand around the edges of the marginal profits. Mainly because it would be difficult to get my products into Home Depot and Lowe’s if I can’t supply their whole national chain. And that’s assuming Home Depot and Lowe’s haven’t agreed to any exclusivity with the current manufacturers which I’d need private equity money to beat.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        You're right on all fronts, my only comment is that there is a lot of room for product improvement though. $800+ for 3 sheets of plastic, and that is it, is absurd. They don't even interlock or have trim for the corners... example... https://www.homedepot.com/p/WOODBRIDGE-Haydon-32-in-x-60-in-x-96-in-Solid-Surface-3-Piece-Easy-Up-Adhesive-Alcove-Shower-Wall-Surround-in-High-Gloss-White-HWP4300/314842961 https://www.homedepot.com/p/WOODBRIDGE-Haydon-32-in-x-60-in-... Of course adding those items would cost even more, so it is a bit of a race to zero. That said, if you can get a following by homebuilders and into every single new housing project, it might be worth it. I'm sure having some sort of inside track advantage there would be necessary too. None of which I personally have, but as an end user of this stuff, I'd be more than happy to support and provide feedback on.
- frankus 4y ago
  The great thing about PEX is that they made an expensive* tool that makes joining pipes like 90% less skill-intensive. I'd love to see something similar done for electric wiring. I'm picturing something like an electrical box that you can directly connect Romex that's been stripped with a special tool, and then a circuit-breaker-style snap-in for the actual receptacle. The parts/tools would cost more but might dramatically speed up the installation. *relatively expensive, especially in the early days.
  - mike50 4y ago
    Hubbel already makes this. https://www.hubbell.com/wiringdevice-kellems/en/Products/Electrical-Electronic/Wiring-Devices/Straight-Blade-Devices/SnapConnect-Receptacles/c/2027718 https://www.hubbell.com/wiringdevice-kellems/en/Products/Ele...
    - latchkey 4y ago
      Neat but the speed up here just doesn't seem that extreme, I guess maybe if you're installing 10k of these a day. I feel like the time it takes to put the wires into the harness is just as much time as putting them straight into the receptacle and tightening the nut. I did start using wago's though... those are handy for sure.
- RetpolineDrama 4y ago
  >Things like PEX tubing for plumbing PEX is terrible, pretty much every commercial brand has been shown to leech petrochemicals into your water. This varies a lot based on your municipal water supply's characteristics. Unfortunately cleaner water leeches more. PEX saves megabuilders $$$ and plumbers time, but it's not good for you.
jaclaz 4y ago
I have no idea how much it affects the data used to make that calculation, nor how much is its relevance in the US, but here (EU, Italy) besides the building code improvements there has been a very noticeable increase in amount/complexity of electric and hydraulic/heating/conditioning installments.
belval 4y ago
Pretty sure this is the right answer and calling this "worker productivity" seems a bit harsh. A "Pretty Good House" (book that was on the front page last week) includes insulation above and below the foundation slab, vapour barriers, double studs to break thermal bridges, complex window installation (again thermal bridges), air exchangers and heat pumps with ducts (or mini-splits). New constructions (for cold zone), need to be air tight and that certainly comes at a cost in time as it is work to apply all the layers, run the conduits and whatnot.
- kodah 4y ago
  I have no data to back this observation up, but everyone (especially in the media, but also in corporate life) is attacking "worker productivity" lately. Everyone's got a reason, but when you dig into them they all stink.
  - spamizbad 4y ago
    It's a convenient narrative. We're all suffering because the workers are too lazy!
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    Yeah those lazy builders need to stop working from home and put on a damn tie!
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]
  - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    From the mouth of CEOs it's clear they're trying to wrestle back low wages and unpaid overtime using shame. Especially out of touch when they bad mouth their own subordinates and think it doesn't reflect poorly on themselves. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/marc-benioff-says-newer-salesforce-employees-are-less-productive.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/marc-benioff-says-newer-sale...
    - deleted 4y ago
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Isn’t the real headline then that building construction technology hasn’t improved at the same rate as other manufacturing tech? For example, cars today are orders of magnitude more complicated than 50 years ago, but due to more efficient manufacturing technology, the auto industry has far higher productivity per employee than it did 50 years ago.
- softfalcon 4y ago
  I believe this is why we're seeing some of the industry starting to experiment with pre-fabbed homes that are modular but can be constructed using the automation we see in car manufacturing. The weak link in creating ever more complex homes, with ever more stringent building codes, at faster rates, is to remove the "humans with nail guns and drills" from the construction process. At some point, us meat sacks are the weak link in optimizing an industry. Humans can only go so fast. That's why (as you've said) we've seen massive gains in productivity for other manufacturing industries.
  - ryanSrich 4y ago
    > I believe this is why we're seeing some of the industry starting to experiment with pre-fabbed homes that are modular but can be constructed using the automation we see in car manufacturing. Are they doing anything different than what was available in a Sears catalog 50 years ago?
    - elil17 4y ago
      Yes, the manufacturing methods used in the factories are different today. For example, you can now have all the boards nailed together by robots. Other things are still the same. Electric wiring, for instance, is still a largely manual process.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    Manufactured homes have been a thing for decades now. The problem with them is that their efficiency gains don't scale. It's relatively cost effective to produce a single-wide trailer, but not so much when producing cookie cutter two story homes with basements. For American-style suburban homes, it's most efficient to build most of the home on site, and only manufacture off-site a handful items like roof trusses. People might not realize this, but a small crew can frame several houses in a single (very, very long) day.
nemo44x 4y ago
> Nail guns can't make up for building code and higher finish work demands. It's not uncommon to see 6 or 7 layers in sheathing today. Yeah pretty much this I suspect. The paper doesn't propose that more regulations and complex code is why it's harder to build things today. And that's not a bad thing - code is a great thing since it sets a standard. Houses from 100 years ago, a carpenter could just make game time decisions regarding things that are highly scrutinized today like staircase run/rise, doorway height, etc. If you gut an old house it's amazing how simple they are. The old saying "they don't build them like they used to" applies here. We don't because we can't and when they did they overbuilt them because they were simple and it wasn't documented what the build had to be.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Also everything that is built needs regular inspection while in progress. When the frame is put up it is typically inspected to ensure it meets code and that correct fasteners and brackets are used. Until the inspection is done you don't see roofing and electrical finished up. Then you have the electrical and plumbing on top the foundation. And when that is in its inspected again. Also heating cooling piping. Then fiber insulation is put in walls, then you have your drywall installed. Then you have the different finish teams come in. Finish plumbing, cabinetry, tiling, floors. And then another round of builder inspection. Then you get to the city and bank inspections. Any one of the inspections or the specilaty teams running slow can push the whole project back. If your AC ducts aren't in you can't drywall for example.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    > Also everything that is built needs regular inspection while in progress And this is a very good thing indeed. One thing I really love about the system here is we have detailed code and objective inspections based on it. Creates safe structures that can be planned and priced and immune to bribery.
rsynnott 4y ago
Higher proportion of apartment blocks (almost always higher cost per sqft, with the tradeoff being lower land use) also seems likely to be an issue.
arcticbull 4y ago
Youre exactly right. The average new home has twice the square footage it did in the 70s. [1] [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/ https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...
fortylove 4y ago
>6 or 7 layers in sheathing today. What do you mean by this?
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/insulation/crash-course-in-control-layers https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/insulation/c...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fortylove 4y ago
    Ah, thanks for the response. My confusion is that in American building, the term sheathing usually just refers to the outer layer of plywood that nails to the studs. Edit to add: this really hasn't changed all that much in the past 100 years. Our house is over 100 years old, and is built very similarly to a modern stick framed house, with the exception of not having insulation (when built), and with the sheathing being planks instead of plywood. Also, the lath&plaster interior walls were a lot more involved in making than modern drywall finishing.
conductr 4y ago
Homes are architecturally more complicated than the ranches and bungalows of the past as well. This increases the time spent on each job significantly.
RC_ITR 4y ago
There's the theory that building codes are used similarly (and complimentarily) to zoning laws to limit the supply of new housing (and therefore raise property values). A great example being fire walls and mandatory self-latching doors between garages and living spaces - definitely a logical thing (cars and their gas are flammable, so let's isolate them from the house). When you look at the data [0], garage fires are 2% of residential fires because cars don't really catch on fire in garages (fires happen in garages, but usually because of intentionally set fires getting out of control) So now, in the midst of a housing affordability crisis (or a the end of a great run for real estate, depending on your outlook), we have construction workers using special fire-resistant drywall (that must be cut specially and cannot have holes in it), placing solid steel doors, and generally spending a lot of hours and materials building spaces that people don't even live in, when really, adding smoke detectors in garages solves the problem. [0] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i12.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v14i12.pd...
- asdff 4y ago
  This even extends to stuff added to builds that are mandated by law and have little reasonable justification. For example, a city might demand all new apartment units need to have a balcony, and all new apartment buildings might need to have some open courtyard space. Now you've increased the cost per unit by a huge amount by mandating these balconies and also the unrentable voidspace.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    And this is part due to the fact that real estate has to (at least in part) be valued on hypothetical replacement cost. Can’t have apartment buildings reading hands for $100mn when a new one costs $20mn (or have the land sell for $80mn when you only allow 2 stories to be built on it).
- rovolo 4y ago
  The 2% is a bit misleading because the fire severity depends on how well it's contained. ~50% of fires are "confined" to an object, mostly cooking fires inside pots. Garages are 5% of non-confined fires, which is similar to living rooms (6%) and attics (5%) [0]. The numbers also go slightly up when apartment buildings are excluded[1], taking garage fires to 6% of non-confined residential fires. [0] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i2.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i2.pdf [1] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i6.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v21i6.pdf

LatteLazy 4y ago

A number which is hard to define and impossible to measure should not be treated as a fact.

LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
They're measuring exactly what they want to measure to draw the conclusion they were looking for.

greenthrow 4y ago

This is absurd. Houses are so much more complex than in the 1970s, and so much larger. In 1972 central AC was not common, now it's basically required. Square footage is way higher. Number of electrical outlets and switches per room. Moulding and trim are expected in many houses. Porches, decks, patios are much more ornate. Today's average house ia closer to the house of a millionaire in the 1970s than the average house from that time.

bgentry 4y ago
From https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning : > By the late 1960s, most new homes had central air conditioning So the addition of central HVAC likely isn't a big factor, because most new homes in the US already had it 50 years ago.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Eh, not 100% sure if it's a good comparison or not. Mid century homes with central hvac were typically poorly designed from my experience leading to over/under heated rooms. Modern systems typically have a much better designed return air system (hence more piping) rather than a single return at the unit.
croes 4y ago
Would be interesting to compare the regulations for building construction now and then.
JamesSwift 4y ago
I'm not sure I would say much of anything is more ornate today compared to prior. Especially if you actually look at the details of the craftsmanship, anything of "standard" quality of times past are high-end details now.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry. This is clearly accurate - people are not buying the cheapest housing in the middle of nowhere. Instead, the most money is spent in cities which are already built up and are more difficult to develop further.

anonreeeeplor 4y ago

Corruption was a massive problem in USA industry as well as slowdowns due to legal red tape. My guess is incompetent government is at the root of the problem. The more you scale red tape, the harder it is to do anything. Look at the California high speed rail. Corrupt governments make far more money by slowing down a project and using it as a washing machine to extract rents. Getting large public projects to misspend their funds on red tape, lawyers and other while delaying building is way more profitable than just letting any construction project simply get the job done fast. The corruption of the government itself and hybrid with larger construction companies very likely incentivized slow and never complete construction. Why would you want the work done fast when drawing it out and slowing it down is far more profitable, to milk it forever:

markus_zhang 4y ago
Red tape in many cases is simply an excuse for more corruption or stronger interest groups IMHO. It puts a legal stamp on a lot of things so that ordinary people cannot argue that. That also makes me think that SWE should either break all those red tapes or put up their own. Nowadays they are simply being milked by everyone else who is behind a red tape or a stamp or a certification or something similar.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >It puts a legal stamp on a lot of things so that ordinary people cannot argue that. Ordinary people can argue it. They'll just get argued back at and mired by the other 50% of people who will knee jerk defend the government and the government and the interest groups will laugh all the way to the bank.
Mechanical9 4y ago
With respect to incompetent government, I like to share this opinion whenever possible: The US government and US state governments are incompetent due to constant gridlock. Incentives of politicians within our governments are similarly to draw out all processes since employment is not based on performance or promises kept, but is instead guaranteed for a fixed amount of time. Politicians can continually base their re-election on the fact that "the system is broken", while they themselves are doing nothing to fix it or are not able to do anything to fix it. Having separately elected house, senate, and president is a primary source of gridlock. Each body can reject a legislative change, while none can effectively create change. The only way laws can be passed in this system is under a very rare set of conditions. When those conditions are present (government shutdown imminent, filibuster eliminated, plurality requirements reduced) you see large omnibus bills pushed through as fast as possible, without time to adequately vet the details. From an engineering perspective, this would be like pushing a few massive commits every few years rather than making regular bug fixes as needed. As such, our laws are buggy and unmaintained. Unfortunately, this leads many to believe that regulations generally are ineffective rather than the poor implementations of such being ineffective. Poorly written legislation puts more pressure on the judicial system to litigate between the lines. This is an externality that is extremely expensive for every individual and company to have to deal with. I advocate for a more parliamentary style system where politicians continued careers are based on their effectiveness and continued approval rather than fixed terms. There are plenty of ways to ensure proper checks and balances without stopping government dead in it's tracks.

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago

Safety is our number one priority. Not efficiency.

avelis 4y ago
Those two aren't mutually exclusive IMO.
- CodeWriter23 4y ago
  When you have to re-anchor your safety harness to move 5 feet it's kind of difficult to maintain efficiency.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    When you have to close the site and scrape someone's brains up it's really difficult to maintain efficiency.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      Construction safety laws are written in blood.
    - CodeWriter23 4y ago
      Indeed. BTW my comment was not anti-safety.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Feel-good rallying cries like this make for cheap virtue points but are completely meaningless in a reality where pretty much nothing is a binary choice with a low number of variables. For example, it's easy to sit in an air-conditioned office and say "thou shalt not overload the trucks" but when you actually drag your ass to somewhere you can observe the conditions in which the per-load work is being done it becomes clear that much analysis must be done to figure out if more trucks at 80k is in fact safer than fewer trucks at 120k.

a-r-t 4y ago

Houses were much simpler 50 years ago. The building codes have changed a lot since then and modern houses have added construction complexity with better waterproofing, air sealing, fire proofing, bracing, and more advanced mechanical systems.

markus_zhang 4y ago
However many modern homes use inferior material for the job comparing to the older homes in the same area. Probably to cut cost. I'm not sure if it was also the case for older homes built in the 50s/60s though.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Can you give an example of inferior material?
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    I can: - Vinyl windows compared to old growth wood windows from 100 years ago. - Vinyl siding compared to cedar shakes. - Extremely poor wood quality in the lower end 2x4 and 2x6 lumber. - Sheathing that's essentially cardboard in really cheap builds. - Flooring is sad today in cheap to moderate homes. Thing is there were really badly built homes 100 years ago and they just aren't standing any longer. We do get a but of selection bias when we compare old homes. The ones that are still standing were probably built well and of quality materials and have been taken care of. You can build an awesome home today out of excellent materials like engineered wood, high quality OSB/ply/ZipSystem, and of course whatever you want to spend on flooring, siding, windows, etc.
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      Note that there's some selection bias to those 100 year old windows. The houses built cheaply a century ago aren't around anymore.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago

croes 4y ago

Maybe there is a correlation "Worker injuries and illnesses are down—from 10.9 incidents per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.7 per 100 in 2020." https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats

nobodyandproud 4y ago
Are undocumented workers also tallied?
- rightbyte 4y ago
  If they were there would be documentation, right?
  - nobodyandproud 4y ago
    I have no idea when and how worker injuries are reported, which is why I asked.

legitster 4y ago

> And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry. So... basically high-rises and mobile homes? It's hard not to see this as a direct result of city councils universally loathing oversized housing blocks.

throwaway4aday 4y ago

That graph looks an awful lot like the one for GDP vs Wage Growth.

nanocat 4y ago
I came here to say that ^^
jessaustin 4y ago
Good point! For those who haven't noticed the most important fact about the USA economy: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2015/06/24/lagging-long-term-wage-growth/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...

Kukumber 4y ago

The pay and the working conditions are miserable, plus the society doesn't value hard work anymore

feoren 4y ago
"Society doesn't ___ anymore" statements are nearly universally bullshit.
- troupe 4y ago
  Society doesn't make true statements about society anymore.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  that explains the current situation, it's all bullshit :clown_face: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/construction-worker/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/construction-work... https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/web-developer/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/web-developer/sal...
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    people in this website have a hard time with factual data, everything that goes against their narrative is downvoted, it's funny, reality check incoming soon enough
    - feoren 4y ago
      It's not worth trying to explain to you why two data points illustrating an effect that has been true for all of human history is not evidence that "society does not value hard work anymore", so you get downvoted instead. Did the robber barons of the 1800s pay their rail workers well? Did Medieval European feudal lords pay their serfs well? I'm not saying the current situation is ideal, I'm saying "society doesn't value hard work anymore" is 100% bullshit. What is my narrative, exactly? You seem to think you know. I'd love to hear what it is.

rqtwteye 4y ago

Easy. Have them to daily standups, sprint planning every two weeks and a day of retrospective and soon their producticity will be rockin'.

winrid 4y ago
We also need to break the tasks down to smaller units. *George, instead of just putting up this wall, can you have a ticket and close it for every board you put up?*
- VLM 4y ago
  Even better, we could base hiring on solving word search puzzles containing workplace words to select the best of the best construction workers, and maybe some trivia tests.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    I mean word puzzles and trivia tests won't select the best construction workers necessarily, but it'll help us select for the dedicated and smart ones, who really put the gumption into grinding LeetBrick.
swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
Make sure to have them point out each task ahead of time and then get upset if they take longer than the allocated points
- flavius29663 4y ago
  also, get upset if their estimates are too high. They are agile, they should finish things faster

scythe 4y ago

It doesn't seem like an uncorrelated observation that "construction worker" is one of the most undesirable occupations, alongside "janitor" and "line cook". If it's a terrible career, only the people lacking options will choose it. Housing, healthcare and education are the three sectors infamously outpacing inflation in the modern economy. In the latter two, workers usually have at least a decent, if not good, career prospect. Construction, meanwhile, is considered a gig for noncitizens who can't be hired in the regular economy — notwithstanding the special subsets like electricians and plumbers. Part of this likely has to do with the incredible amount of unemployment risk faced by a construction worker; construction volumes may plummet in any region at any time, forcing workers to move hundreds of kilometers away or change jobs entirely. Worse, these fluctuations are often correlated among regions, practically guaranteeing that many builders will be out of a job in downturns. Education and healthcare, at least, suffer almost none of this, despite other stressors. One mitigation may be a sort of "Keynesian public housing" apparatus: while the populist thing to do is to call for public housing when prices are at their highest, this just puts more strain on a squeezed construction market. But if the state picks up the slack during downturns by specifically building small, affordable-type (if not explicitly subsidized) units, it may maintain employment volumes and (long-run) prevent lower-class pain during housing booms, while the units built will not directly compete with the sort of large & luxurious housing built by the private sector.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

> And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry. This is a nice way to say "NIMBYs have made sure building anything in areas where there are jobs is a herculean task"

exabrial 4y ago

It's not construction worker productivity so much as building codes complexity has increased 40%.

pirate787 4y ago

In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force. They are a quarter of some construction labor categories. Perhaps using undocumented subcontractors may play a role in lower productivity growth (cheap, unstable, and relatively unskilled labor) or maybe just distorting the statistics. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EW-Construction-factsheet.pdf https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/...

huevosabio 4y ago
This is an unlikely hypothesis. Most likely explanation is just that we have been burdened with infinite amount regulatory busy work.
alexfromapex 4y ago
Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  You mean inflating the currency to hell has negative consequences? Shock.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  It cannot be the case that “all expenses” have grown faster than inflation (which is what real wages takes into account).
  - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Either way its a pay drop.
    - rahimnathwani 4y ago
      GGP referred to 'real wages', and implied that they've increased.

avelis 4y ago

For general US construction, there are single-source cost-plus service contracts. Which incentivizes construction to do only the necessary and charge the max possible for it. In contrast, a concrete milestone service contract with re-bid sections of the contract that miss their milestones can create a competitive construction landscape. Things I am omitting. Red tape slowing down construction. Changing the incentive structure can probably help boost efficiency on the provider side.

LatteLazy 4y ago
I thought Cost Plus incentivise people to do unnecessary work? Since getting x% of "plus" on top of a huge messily, error filled contract is more than a lean efficient one?
- avelis 4y ago
  I think contract organization aside. If the government says it's a requirement the vendor will charge the max it can and accomplish it no matter what. So, in practice vendors have accountants on staff that will work a contract in such a way that logistically allows the vendor to charge the most it can for the contract.

mistrial9 4y ago

supply-side blame-game

jedberg 4y ago

They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. Also, does this paper take into account increased regulations? Both the time spent complying with new building codes as well as the time spent waiting for inspectors?

eklitzke 4y ago
If it's twice as much finishing work it's also twice as much "fast" work (the first 80%). The ratio of time spent between the easy stuff and the hard stuff shouldn't change, at least not just based on a square footage change.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Until you consider central heating, multiple bathrooms, far more electric outlets, and then multiple inspections of the above by different groups. Modern homes are far more complex.
gruez 4y ago
>They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. I don't see the point you're making. Houses are twice as big, so they require twice the amount of finishing work. If productivity was growing or staying the same, you shouldn't get less productivity as a result of that.
- jedberg 4y ago
  The finishing work takes longer now because of the complexity.

Giorgi 4y ago

I wonder how Chinese compare, I bet they doubled.

VLM 4y ago
Famously, their inspection infrastructure and regulation boils down to "buyer beware" so its going to be an apples to oranges comparison.
vlunkr 4y ago
Probably hard to say because you can't trust any answers from the propaganda machine.
pixl97 4y ago
Do the Chinese actually build much single family housing?
red-iron-pine 4y ago
And I bet most of them are empty. And will be forever. See also "Chinese ghost towns": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in...

blacklion 4y ago

I wonder, how injuries and death on construction sites have changed at this period.

wonderwonder 4y ago

Wonder how much of it is related to contractors underbidding to win a contract and then saying they need more money which slows everything down. Or just throwing a bid out without really doing the due diligence required to understand what needs to be done. For example the New York tunnel project that's billions over cost and years behind. I see this every time I hire a contractor to do work on my house, every experience is terrible and over cost and behind schedule. Currently looking to raise a sunken living room due to flood risk. I have a room that is connected to the sunken living room that is raised currently via a wooded frame. The dry wall is open so its clearly visible. There is clearly open space under the floor lift. Guy gives me a quote, I was very clear when I met him that I needed under the side room filled as well and that the goal was to prevent water seeping in due to the floor being lower than ground level. I have him come out again because I am ready to hire him but want one more walk through. I ask what the risk or complication is pouring concrete under the raised side room and the existing floor lift system. He acts surprised and says it was not part of the quote. I ask the complexity of pouring the concrete behind the fireplace because there is a gap behind it and the wall. He acts surprised and says its not included. All of this was clearly visible when he came out the first time and the stated goal was to raise the floor to prevent water seepage due to height discrepancy inside and outside. He says he would have to demo the giant fireplace... My prior experience I had a contractor that I was working with who kept telling me that the crew was at the house working and I had to call and tell him over and over that no one was there. For months... They do this nonsense every single time, they submit a BS quote just to get the job figuring once they are in they can just charge whatever and figure it out. I have yet to meet an honest or competent contractor.

pixl97 4y ago
If you have a contractor looking for jobs, at least recently, it's likely they are a terrible contractor. The good contractors tend to be booked out for months
linuxftw 4y ago
Have you considered what you're asking for is not practical? Nobody is going to attempt to pour a slab under an existing structure through a hole behind a fireplace.

ajross 4y ago

Note that this is using a counterintuitive definition for "productivity". Most comments here are taking it to mean that construction projects get less stuff done (foundations dug, concrete poured, etc...), but it's actually measuring it as an economic value in units of "value added per full time worker". That seems to be rather more related to the distribution of capital than work output. If the construction industry were getting more efficient, you'd actually expect its margins to be declining, right? I don't think this is measuring what people want it to measure.

VLM 4y ago
A plumber can charge $15K to install a new sewer line, both in 2022 and in 1972 (inflation adjusted). However, an increasing fraction of money is likely being spent on lower margin lower productivity "construction". I'm sure faux paint finishes look nice, and they are expensive, but they're not "replace a sewer lateral" expensive. Thus its inevitable the overall market segment will become less productive if it expands. The "mistake" in the linked article is assuming all construction work is equal and unchanging over those decades where CLEARLY there have been infinite real estate fads over the decades. There's just no way replacing countertops with granite can generate as much financial productivity as sewer work, and the fraction of the market spend on low-profit countertops is vastly higher now.

antman 4y ago

Having worked in a construction site in another country my observation would be that we used to have countless undeclared labor for tax reasons anf now we have countless divided by two... Now working as an analyst it is important each time to have a ground knowledge and business expert to avoid obvious measurement biases. Especially when comparing different eras.

eagleinparadise 4y ago

CRE guy here. A lot of this "productivity loss" is also due to government related staffing issues and bureaucracy. Most people are describing more complex building codes, so I'll add something new. I had a project that was delayed by over a year during Covid because the city approved incorrect plans, came back and requested revisions, and then lost the physical plans (without us knowing until we checked in asking what the status was). This was almost a year delay and added cost overruns, etc. It also made the required rent higher to recoup those costs and try to be profitable (that deal will lose money). Remember, there's someone at the city working 9-5pm clocking in and out.. they are not impacted if the project is denied, delayed, etc... while the developer is incurring cost of capital of 7-10%. Another example of bureaucracy: you have to go through a particular order of inspections when developing property. One of them includes elevator inspections. You have to have power before that, so that's another set of inspections. IIRC, during Covid there were only something like half a dozen elevator inspections for the entire state of CA. The source below says there was 15 in 2019. If your elevator inspection is 2 months late... guess what, your project is going to be late. https://laist.com/news/elevator-inspections-los-angeles https://laist.com/news/elevator-inspections-los-angeles Remember the modular startup Katerra that gobbled money from Softbank? I knew a developer who did one of their projects. He said Katerra would deliver the units on time, but the city's permitting process was so broken that they couldn't actually install or inspect these units. So they would have to find lots to store the material (+costs & +issues). Katerra's "value-add" was the speed of delivery would cut costs down, but in reality this was hard to achieve "on-site".

runnerup 4y ago
> made the required rent higher If, all along, you could have rented it out for more money ... why were you planning to rent it out for less money? I get that you wouldn't have to, but it appears that the "market rate rent" was higher than you initially anticipated. As a corollary, assuming that you had initially planned on the highest rent that the market would bear...it seems that after a year of unexpected delays you'd most likely still choose to finish the project even at a loss. This is because all the loss would have already been sunk cost that you can't change anymore, and at the "original maximum rent the market would bear" you'd still make your IRR/ROI on the marginal future investment of finishing the construction. So, assuming you couldn't raise the rent, you'd lose money either way, but you'd lose less money by finishing the construction vs. losing more money by abandoning the project entirely.

Dig1t 4y ago

Speaking specifically about the construction industry in California, because I am very familiar with that topic: Labor is less skilled, because of huge supply of undocumented workers. Also building codes and requirements for building safety have increased tremendously. Building a house in CA is WAY more complex than it used to be, since there have been so many requirements added to building codes over the years. Arguably CA houses are better built than they used to be, but the flip side is that it takes more time and experience to build one correctly.

parineum 4y ago
> Arguably CA houses are better built than they used to be This is inarguable. The aftermath of the major earthquakes of the past have had an very noticeable effect on building safety and the effect on damage done has been measurable. I can't imagine there aren't similar trends in other places for their own local natural disasters.

winrid 4y ago

I think we are focusing too much on the individual worker and not the process/new building laws/bureaucracy that is slowing us down.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tonymet 4y ago

Does any government office work on efficiency? I can think of local , state, federal offices working to slow things down, but none working on speeding things up.

pixl97 4y ago
Standards across the industry in theory should increase efficiency. Problem is homes are highly customized quite often. Add to that home building is very boom/bust. The county I live in currently has 1900 homes in progress. A year from now if the market goes down that number could be 100. Trying to scale things that have regulated and licensed inspections is massively difficult. And the answer is not let the builder do whatever because whatever almost always equals screwing the buyer.
- tonymet 4y ago
  that's not universal, some will slow things down and some may speed things up.

tomrod 4y ago

Worker productivity is meaningless if the secular trends (read:code requirements) increase in complexity over time. This analysis approach and outcomes are garbage, in my professional opinion. While I generally appreciate Dr. Goolsbee's research, here the causality as presented here is seriously off. The assumption is that the productivity has decreased. However, the factors of this aren't a shift in the supply curve, but rather an increase in labor supply willing to perform the work more cheaply in real terms and increased complexity in construction codes. Add to that the actual materials have been engineered to improve productivity, and I think you have a complete picture. It would be accurate to say the output of the median construction employer has changed, but that accounts all the above factors. What Goolsbee is claiming is that the productivity curve has decreased, and I don't think that is true.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
I think it's an accurate way of looking at it but not the only one. Different company goes from making 10 widgets and 10 hours to One widget in 10 hours plus paperwork, that is a productivity loss in terms of widgets. Sure, and entirely misses any difference in quality certification of the widget. However, the point that you are fewer widgets per hour still stands. It is a starting point for further questions. For example, Do you really need all that paperwork for the widgets? In this case the analysis was conducted on housing square footage built and we are building less per hour. If we accept that we can ask further questions.
- tomrod 4y ago
  The issue is the attribution. Here, workers are attributed (even at a high level, consider the title). But it's not the workers, it's bad policy and bad management.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Think a lot of people on this thread are making the mistake of confusing attribution and blame. If you tie a worker's hands behind their back, you will have low worker productivity. A spade is a spade. Asking why workers have low productivity is an entirely different question. People seem Primed to assume that anyone saying workers are unproductive means that they're lazy. This is obviously not the case. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should know that low worker productivity is not a root cause itself. I don't think that the article claims this at all. Furthermore, if it is the case of bad management or is some in this thread claim bad regulation, you can't determine that without first demonstrating a decrease in worker productivity. Bad management is bad because it causes lower worker productivity.

bradwood 4y ago

Safety standards have also improved which I expect has had a negative impact on productivity. Remember this? https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/11/11/arts/11LUNCH1_SPAN/11LUNCH1_SPAN-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/11/11/arts/11LUNCH1_SPA...

patientplatypus 4y ago

This isn't all that surprising. I mean, it's surprising a priori, but not post hoc when considering the social culture of the United States. Construction is a job that you go into if you've been to prison, haven't gone to college, or are an undocumented laborer. It attracts those people who are the least skilled in the country because it's a hard job that's hard on your body, pays little, and is intellectually uninteresting (compared to most college educated middle class jobs). The people who make money in the industry have to go through onerous licensing requirements and have the skills necessary to run their own business and take on the risks of having that business fail, which most people (myself included) don't have. That's managing payroll, licensing, taxation (and avoiding taxation), sales, marketing, and all the rest of it while still being able to be a master plumber or what have you which can take 10 years or more. And even then you can be making 70+ hours a week or have to be on-call for emergencies (as a plumber), only be able to get work during certain times of the year (summer for a large amount of construction), or be away from home for long periods of time (if you have a specialized skill such as oil drilling or specialized skills in setting concrete and so forth and have to travel across the country to where the work is). I've worked day labor in construction. After only a few months my hands are messed up to the point where some days it hurts to type after longer periods of time. Have you ever had to carry dry wall, lumber or sheet rock for 8 hours a day for minimum wage? It's boring and it hurts. I'm currently unemployed and homeless. I'd rather be unemployed and homeless than do construction again. A year of that and my body would fall apart. As a society we've made the industry as unattractive as possible so what do you expect?

bnolsen 4y ago

Building techniques haven't really improved much (steel framed houses go up faster, use less materials and are cheaper). I guess tools side stepped, with battery operated tools being about like air tools for efficiency. Why the drop otherwise?

rcme 4y ago

How do you measure the value add of a full-time construction worker?

TimPC 4y ago

I think you have to find a measure that looks at build times for apples to apples projects. It’s entirely possible more fine-detail work goes into the excessive amount of luxury units we now build and that this time consuming work explains a large portion of the effect. We can also look at regulations that improve safety and see that they slow down labour productivity as well. Not saying we should get rid of those regulations just saying they explain some of the decline.

bparsons 4y ago

It is called occupational health and safety rules. You can't (legally) work people to death anymore.

intrasight 4y ago

I still say measurement/approach error. The article defines productivity as "value add per unit of input". The only measurement of "value add" that makes sense it the sale price. Given how high are those prices are, I don't see how "productivity" could not be super high.

shadowtree 4y ago

Pretty sure worker health has improved - so this is OSHA making sure you have proper safety procedures, staffing, gear ... which all makes slapping together the Empire State Building in a little over a year now impossible. Which is a good thing! Watching the videos touring China skyscraper build quality makes you appreciate building codes in the West as well.