With the recent news of Home Depot and Lowe’s earnings declines, we are starting to see a downward trend in home improvement spending. But there is no doubt that the home services industry will perform strongly in 2022. According to data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies , Americans will spend nearly $500 billion on home improvement in 2022, marking a decade of consistent growth within the industry.
However, due to the increased demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing labor shortage across all sectors, many homeowners have struggled to find professional help for their construction needs. This has left homeowners facing remodels or even serious repairs on their own.Table of Contents
In this study, Today’s Homeowner sought to answer: Where are homeowners most impacted by skilled labor shortages? In these locations where there is a gap between demand and supply, homeowners may often have to turn to DIY projects , be prepared for longer wait times for remodeling, or even pay a premium on the services of home contractors.
Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Census Bureau, we created a proprietary ranking of where domestic service worker shortages are most and least prevalent. Additionally, we explored home improvement trends by analyzing national labor and contractor occupation changes over the past several years. See our Methodology section below for more information on our data and analysis.
key findings
Rust Belt regions are more likely to feel the pressure. Metro areas in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio are among the 10 places where labor shortages could have the biggest impact on homeowners.
Homeowners in Florida are feeling the shortage of skilled workers the least. Five of the top 10 places with the least skilled worker shortages are in the Sunshine State.
Since 2019, the number of domestic service workers relative to homeowners has declined by 7% and BLS data suggests the labor shortage could get even worse in the coming decade.
Of the eight skilled trade jobs we analyzed, home inspector is the only occupation with a negative 10-year projected job growth rate (-4.4%), causing problems for both buyers and sellers.
Where is the shortage of domestic service workers greatest?
Although the shortage of home helpers is acute, we found that the availability of where homeowners can find skilled help is uneven. Nationally, there are about 55 home service workers per 1,000 homeowners, but in 19 metropolitan areas the figure is no higher than 40.
As mentioned earlier, many of the places where homeowners are most likely to have trouble finding professional help are in the Rust Belt. Also included are several metro areas in southern states. Five of the 30 worst-ranked metro areas are in Texas and three are in Alabama (including Columbus, GA-AL, which spans Georgia and Alabama).
Below is a list of the top metro areas where the worker shortage has the biggest impact on homeowners, including the two individual criteria we considered.
Where the shortage of domestic service workers is the lowest
In some areas, it may be much easier to find professional help for your home improvement projects. In addition to ranking the places where there are the biggest shortages of home service workers, we also looked at where they are the least prevalent.
Two western metro areas top the list: Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Both places have more than 70 home service workers per 1,000 homeowners, and the number of home service workers is on the rise in these cities.
Less employees, more business
There have been widespread complaints of worker shortages across the country following the pandemic, leading to a surge in backlogs for home repair and improvement assistance. Our data shows that homeowners are facing a very real decline in domestic service workers. In 2019, there were approximately 59 domestic service workers for every 1,000 homeowners, while in 2021 the number was even lower at 55. This represents a 7% drop in two years.
In contrast to the trend of fewer domestic service workers, the concentration of contractor businesses has increased slightly. In 2017, there were 47.07 contractor businesses per 1,000 businesses nationally and in 2021, the figure was 48.57 – an increase of about 3% in five years.
Slow job growth expected over the next decade
The gap between demand and supply in household services will continue to grow over the next decade. Data from the BLS shows that job growth in six of the eight household service jobs we considered is expected to be slower than the national average (5.3%).
Electricians and pest control workers are two exceptions. From 2021 to 2031, the BLS estimates that the number of electricians and pest control workers will grow by 7.1% and 6.8%, respectively.
Among home service jobs with the slowest expected growth, home inspectors rank last. The BLS estimates that there will be 4.4% fewer home inspectors in 2031 than in 2021. This is likely to have a huge impact on home sellers and buyers, both of whom need inspectors when selling or buying a home.
Methodology
To determine where homeowners are most impacted by the labor shortage, Today’s Homeowner compared 198 of the 200 largest metro areas with complete data available. Taking into account both the number of employees serving a home and the number of businesses serving homeowners’ needs, we compared metro areas based on four key metrics:
- Home service workers per 1,000 homeowners. Data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2022 Occupational Employment Survey and the Census Bureau’s 2021 1-Year American Community Survey .
- Three-year change in the number of home service workers. Data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2019 and 2022 Occupational Employment Surveys .
- Contractor businesses per 1,000 businesses. Data comes from the Census Bureau’s 2021 County Business Patterns Survey .
- Three-year change in the number of contractor businesses. Data comes from the Census Bureau’s 2018 and 2021 County Business Patterns Surveys .
We calculated the average ranking using four metrics, double-weighting home service workers per 1,000 homeowners and single-weighting all other metrics. The city with the highest home service labor shortage received a score of 100, and vice versa.
fair usage policy
We encourage journalists and reporters to share our findings on trends in the home services industry. If you wish to do so, please link back to our original story to give us proper credit for our research.