Arkansas Builders Tackle Skilled Labor Shortage with In-House Training

Joe Wilson, superintendent with Crossland Construction, at the Walmart Home Office construction site in Bentonville. (Michael Woods)

Construction company leaders in Arkansas agree skilled labor is in short supply, but the shortage has become so chronic that they’ve grown accustomed to working around it.

“I would say we are in a predictable normal,” said John Teeter, the president and CEO of C.R. Crawford Construction of Fayetteville. “There’s a skilled labor shortage, but it seems, in the last decade, there always has been. Where we’ve been the last 24 months, it’s predictable. There’s not unlimited resources, but you can look ahead and make a plan around them.

“It’s not like you just can’t find tradesmen to do work. You just might not find them tomorrow.”

Arkansas was one of 19 states that lost construction jobs between March 2024 and March 2025, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. The drop, at just 1.2%, wasn’t precipitous, but it was enough to rank the state 42nd overall in jobs lost during the 12-month period. Arkansas had 67,000 construction jobs in March 2024 and 66,200 this March, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Construction job gains have continued in a majority of states, but the increases are less widespread and robust than in 2024,” AGCA Chief Economist Ken Simonson said. “As workers retire, leave the industry or leave the country, it becomes more urgent to allow contractors to be able to recruit from abroad as well as domestically.”

Nationally, construction jobs were up 1.2% over the time span.

Joe Wilson, a superintendent with Crossland Construction of Rogers, has had his hands full supervising projects for client Walmart Inc. of Bentonville during the past 18 years. Recent and current projects include renovation of Walton’s 5 & 10 store and the Walmart Museum on the Bentonville Square downtown and several new facilities on the new Home Office campus.

Crossland used about 400 workers in the two years it spent on the museum renovation. It averages about 50 a day for its Home Office work.

“Labor is younger,” said Wilson, 51. “What I’ve noticed over the last three or four years is that our labor is actually younger on the jobsite. It’s made up of probably early 20s young people.

“When I started construction 30 years ago, maybe it was because I was 30 years younger, but I saw a lot of older people on the jobsites.”

No Slowdown Seen

The growing economic uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s tariffs has the attention of the construction industry. But so far most clients are still pursuing projects as they did before, Teeter said.

“As far as the other tariffs, it’s still just a lot of noise,” Teeter said. “There is a lot of noise, but there’s nothing actionable yet. I’ve not seen that slow down any projects or cause projects to pause, as of now.”

Greg Fogle, COO of Nabholz Construction in Conway, said Nabholz’s markets still appear strong, especially in Arkansas, even with the ominous economic forecasts.

“To say that we are ignoring it would be untrue,” Fogle said. “We’re definitely focused on what’s going to happen next. The truth is we just don’t know. Our experience is that really nothing’s changed, that we see a lot of our customers continuing their efforts to develop their projects.

“We see folks that have long-term planning for their projects that we’re working on the early stages with them on. They don’t seem deterred yet by those things.”

There have also been concerns about what the current administration could do regarding immigration and its effects on the industry workforce. It’s no secret that legal immigrant workers play an important role in construction.

“Clearly, the Hispanic workforce, for example, in northwest Arkansas, is a huge chunk of our workforce,” Fogle said. “And they are awesome people. They just do awesome work, and we would hate to see anything damage that or degrade that.

“It’s always a concern. I think everybody’s just watching the news and kind of watching to see what happens next.”

Wilson said he hasn’t seen any effects of tariffs or immigration rhetoric on his job sites. “I work with Hispanic populations on a daily basis, and I haven’t even heard of fears that they’re nervous of this,” Wilson said. “They’re a needed asset to the environment that we’re in. I’ve worked with Hispanics since I was 9 years old. I’ve worked in the fields doing farm labor, and I’ve worked in the fields building buildings. They bring a lot to the table.”

Grow Your Own

One thing construction companies and their subcontractor partners have worked diligently on is creating a better, more reliable pipeline of workers for the industry.

Fogle said his company has had a carpentry apprenticeship program for more than 50 years. Nabholz has two other promising newer programs to help develop foremen and superintendents from in-house candidates.

“We’re still finding it hard to locate an adequate number of skilled labor,” Fogle said. “We are having to rely more on our own in-house development programs, apprenticeship programs and the like, which has been very fruitful for us. And I think some of our peers are doing the same thing.”

Wilson said Crossland is scheduled to bring in more than 200 interns this summer. It is important for the industry to reach out to potential employees when they are in high school and college and expose them to what the construction industry has to offer.

“Crossland Construction is really working hard at providing good workers,” Wilson said. “We have high school programs. We have college programs. We raise construction workers at Crossland Construction.

“We’ll go in and intertwine with the building programs that [high] schools have, and we’ll let them know that we’re out here. We’ll support them through getting through high school. We’ll help them through scholarships and internships.”

Wilson said the internships aren’t just a way to find summer labor. They are an important, and expensive, recruitment and retention tool.

“They work the summer, they receive a good paycheck,” Wilson said. “They experience what life’s going to be like in the field, and as the internship progresses, as these people do multiple terms of internship with us, then if we’re on the same page as them, we offer them a full-time career, not just a job, but a career in construction.

“That career can lead to a lifelong mission of building and providing for communities and providing for your family. It’s the cheapest way for a contractor to develop employees.”

Money Talks

The construction has had to deal with rising costs as post-pandemic inflation boosted the price of equipment, material and, yes, labor. Teeter said construction wages have increased similarly to jobs in other fields.

“Well, it is definitely an employees’ market still, but I do think it’s just very gradually changing,” Fogle said. “It might be our ability to manage it that maybe makes it feel like it’s improving. When you look at unskilled workers, typically laborers, they’re quite plentiful. We don’t have any problems at all finding unskilled labor.”

Fogle said he has noticed a trend that employees are becoming more interested in the job requirements than the pay. He said many employees want a more stable work schedule that doesn’t include travel.

In the past, many skilled laborers wanted out-of-town assignments because they meant higher pay and per diem money.

“Some folks in skilled labor are tending to ask for less travel,” Fogle said. “It used to be that travel was a way to gain a little more money to get per travel per diem and the like. And we’re finding that the interest in travel, even just short-term travel for an out-of-town assignment, is becoming less desirable for more people than it used to be.”

Teeter and Wilson said a good long-term strategy for the industry is to challenge the belief that college is the answer for every high school graduate. Trade schools can offer a quicker path to a good-paying career. Wilson said construction needs to promote the number of six-figure jobs available that don’t require a college degree, something Fogle called the industry’s “best-kept secret.”

“I do believe that if you lay out earnings over the next 10 years [comparing] going right into a trade versus a four-year college, a lot of future workers would be really surprised what earnings would be,” Teeter said. “You don’t have the debt. I really think that’s the long-term solution. We need a generational shift.”