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

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

#161

Post by Diederich »

treeman79 wrote: post #141
SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wild is that the entire concept, as we know it, of “undocumented workers” only existed for the past ~22 years.

[flagged]

I grew up in Southern California in the 1970s, and a non-trival percentage of the daily conversations I had with normal people had to be in Spanish, because their English was much worse than my Spanish, which was fair.

"Southern California" was/is a very, very big area. I grew up southeast of downtown.

Can you share where/when you grew up? Just curious.

As far as 'replacement': I can't dismiss such opinions out of hand, but for another anecdote: two of my great grandparents, who came from Germany in the late 19th century, lived in the US for many decades and never learned English that well.

Their children, my dad's father, of course spoke English fluently.

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

#162

Post by latchkey »

systems_glitch wrote: post #143
wil421 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just paid $8000 to get my copper redone in PEX. After the tenth pin hole leak and lots of shark bite fixes, I am not fond of copper.

Good chance the original work was done with a bad batch of pipe, or worse, some contractor used Type M (thinwall) pipe.

Another interesting thing I learned about just yesterday! Type M vs. Type L.

Apparently it also depends on the ph of the water...

https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/copper-pipe-types/

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

#163

Post by tomrod »

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.

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

#165

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

javajosh wrote: post #137
pirate787 wrote: post #39

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/...

>undocumented workers [are responsible for the productivity drop] I am confused by this assertion. If they are undocumented, wouldn't they be excluded in the stats? And if they aren't included in the stats, shouldn't we expect an artificial increase in worker productivity? If there is a 4:1 undocumented to documented ratio, then that 1 documented person will get "credit" for the work of 5 people! Even if 4 of those p…

"Undocumented" is the current preferred euphemism for "illegal immigrant".

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

#166

Post by bsouthern »

loandbehold wrote: post #127
CydeWeys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way. Most of the value of housing in expensive areas is the land itself, not the cost of the building.

You are wrong. For instance in Southern California the cost to build new house is around $350 per sqft. Building 2000 sqft house is around $700K. House like that may sell for around 1 million. So that would be 70% construction and 30% land.

Plus the developers need to be able to make a profit after accounting for operational expenses, closing costs, etc. If there's no financial incentive, nobody is going to build houses.

This myth of zoning being the only factor is maddening. It's almost like the California folks think their housing market is the only one. Plenty of jurisdictions have loose zoning laws and we still see skyrocketing property values. There's interest rates and inflation to consider.

The cold hard truth is: when a bunch of people all want to live in the same areas, housing is going to be expensive. There's no way around it.

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

#167

Post by NegativeLatency »

SideQuark wrote: post #120
thereddaikon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordable housing has little to do with the cost of building the house.

So the cost of a house doesn't factor into affordable housing? Care to explain?

I suspect they're talking about how single family zoning results in only having more expensive places to live.

Even if you build a "cheap" single family house that's still going to be more expensive than some equally cheaply built townhomes, or apartments because of stuff like parking requirements and minimum setbacks.

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

#168

Post by monocasa »

loandbehold wrote: post #127
CydeWeys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way. Most of the value of housing in expensive areas is the land itself, not the cost of the building.

You are wrong. For instance in Southern California the cost to build new house is around $350 per sqft. Building 2000 sqft house is around $700K. House like that may sell for around 1 million. So that would be 70% construction and 30% land.

I was getting quotes in that range in Denver until recently, but now I've been getting quotes for around half that. I think they were trying to keep prices up after the supply chain issues have slowly been fixed and pocket the difference, but the market is slowly becoming more sane.

I expect it to drop to below $200k here once they finish rebuilding the thousand or so homes one of our recent wildfires took out.

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

#169

Post by jzebedee »

samstave wrote: post #108
pirate787 wrote: post #39

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/...

Have you heard of Bangledesh, India, Phillipines and their relation to middle east construction practices project-managed by NL, UK pms? I hope you understand, because of the implications.

No, I haven't. What's the connection?

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

#170

Post by dr-detroit »

HEmanZ wrote: post #121
thereddaikon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordable housing has little to do with the cost of building the house.

In Manhattan or San Francisco? Probably not. But in most of the gigantic, sprawling USA, I suspect affordable housing absolutely has everything to do with cost of building a house.

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