The crumpling home building market and corporate layoffs as a result of economic-related downsizing have lead to high unemployment rates in some regions. Consequently, few contractors report having a hard time finding labor this year.
In southeastern Wisconsin, the availability of qualified labor, including middle management, is the best it’s been in five or six years, says David Frank, president and CEO of David J. Frank Landscape Contracting.
In Bob Keyes’ Langhorne, Pa. market, a rough start where the president of The Keyes Group was down three workers resulted in an influx of interested applicants mid-season as other local contractors scaled back their crews.
Owners experienced the most challenges with “in-between positions” – this was especially the case with crew chiefs/foremen, says David Bennett, cofounder and principal of Atlanta-based Bennett Design & Landscape.
While Bennett has a regular flood of calls and e-mails coming in from landscape architects and designers, “no one is hiring those positions,” he adds.
While the majority of news is good, it wasn’t all easy filling positions this year. While the applicants were there, they weren’t always retainable. “Out of 100 people, we’d interview 20 percent and hire five, but they’d only last a week,” shares Chris Hurlow, lawn care manager at Fast Eddy’s in Mount Vernon, Ohio. “People who have never been in this industry don’t understand how hard this work is.”
As a result, additional training and turnover were necessary throughout the year, contractors report.
While a few contractors did mention rising expenses absorbing the funds available to divvy out raises, the Lawn & Landscape survey shows increases in every pay category. Nothing was below double-digit increases in hourly wages, while salary increases were a bit lower, except for the owner and supervisor positions, which saw 20 and 13.9 percent rises, respectively. For the green industry, which is notorious for having owners who don’t pay themselves adequately, this is good news. However, when splitting the research at the median revenue of $200,000, smaller businesses paid owners $46,068, while larger firms paid owners $86,434 – an approximate $40,000 difference. SOI