Are We Still Building?

Welcome to On the Job. It's hard to believe it that this is now our eighth season, so a sincere thank you to those of you who've been listening through the years. We're thrilled to have you back, and to

Well, I actually think it's looking quite good. You know, there's the issue of perception and reality and how it's perceived politically about the reality is that the job market keeps climbing, that we have come out of the pandemic better than really any other country in the world, and

You mentioned the election.

Is there anything else we should sort of have on our horizon to be aware of?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's all sorts of shocks that come that nobody can ever anticipate. Certainly, I think the Russian invasion of Ukraine ended up having global consequences that nobody expected and nobody anticipated. So you know, I'm not about to pull out my crystal ball and tell you what shocks are on the way.

I don't know.

But if if we presume that basically the essential elements of economic life continuous, they are, you know, I think the future is pretty promising, and there's a lot of federal dollars that are going to be invested in the economy that you know, while the infrastructure bill was passed a couple of years ago, those dollars are really only getting on the ground now and in the near future. So, you know, particularly for folks in the construction industry, the outlook is pretty promising.

As Mark told me, there's only so much crystal ballgazing one can do. As a historian, he knows that unforeseen surprises are both unpredictable and inevitable. However, there is one thing that we can all see coming our way, and that's AI.

I think for the majority of jobs, I don't think in the short term is going to be much of an impact one way or another. I think twenty five thirty fifty years out, the impact of AI is probably going to be incomprehensible.

Means well, we might not be able to fully grasp what a world with AI is going to look like. Mark suggests that we don't necessarily have to fear it or fight it tooth and nail. Sometimes the best way to prepare for our future is to understand our past, and so Mark looks to previous innovations like the computer and Internet, which were certainly disruptive to some, but instead of eliminating tons of jobs, they've been incorporated into them, allowing people to do their jobs better.

If you walk on the construction site and you open up the old gang box where everybody used to store the tools, nine times out of ten you open up the gang box and the inside of the lid is a flat screen because everything is done on iPads. Now that the foreman, that the lead electricians, lead carpers, will have an iPad, and the architects will be shooting drawings back and forth.

And at least for now, it seems unlikely that AI will be able to replace a plumber or an electrician anytime soon, which is a great thing because those types of jobs, the sort of skilled trade jobs, are having quite a resurgence these days. And Mark, a former carpenter himself, which we'll hear more about in the second half of the episode, says, not only are those jobs quite plentiful these days, they were also finally getting their respect they deserve.

Yeah, I think that's been an interesting process. I think that's for two reasons. One is that guidance counselors in high schools and families works kept saying college, college, college, college. You got to go to college if you're going to have a secure living. And what happened when you graduated. You had a pile of student debt and you were a barista or an uber driver, and the prospects, the employment prospects were not anywhere near what they had been

Be, and you have been.

You've been making money that entire time, and you're well on your way towards, you know, having a secure livelihood. I mean, you know, not to romanticize these occupations. They're still dangerous, they're dirty, they're difficult, but it is I think, becoming increasingly attractive to people when they look, on the one hand, as college tuitions keep increasing and increasing, that

With soaring enrollment in technical and vocational schools and a strong jobs market in the blue collar sector, some have even started calling gen Z the tool belt generation. And as public opinion of the trades continues to change, so too are the people drawn to them. For example, women's participation in the blue collar sector is now at a twenty five year high.

Yeah, you know, when I was an apprentice again a long time ago, back in the seventies, they were sort of the pioneers who came in with Title nine back in the late seventies with the federal order, and it was really very, very difficult. I mean, most of the guys on the job did nothing one way or another, but they were always a veryly large number of jerks who were really hostile. I mean, thankfully those days are gone.

Mark has even seen support groups for women in the trades popping up around the country to offer mentoring and to increase retention.

You're seeing women in the trades being elevated to leadership positions in the industry.

It's a very healthy thing, very good thing.

And a similar trend is happening with foreign born Americans.

My parents are immigrants. I'm a big support of immigration. I think this country was built on immigrant labor, and the only difference now is that it's instead of being folks from Southern Europe or Eastern Europe or wherever, they're coming from Central and South America as well as other parts of the world. And I think actually that is

But the diversity we're witnessing in this toolboat generation is also being felt in white collar and service industries as well, where jobs are no longer divided among genders and ethnicities the way they once were, and as our workforce becomes more reflective of the community it's built from, that will only make our economy more resilient and more adaptable to whatever challenges come our way. When we come back from the break, we'll hear how mark erlik went from the job site to the ivy.

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We're back with Mark Irlick, who, aside from having his finger on the economic pulse, is the perfect person to lead off our pivot focus season of On the Job, because it turns out that Mark has quite the pivot story of his own, because long before he was walking those hallowed halls of Harvard, he was swinging a hammer on a job site as a master car carpenter.

I'm a carpenter by trade. I was a member of the Carver's Union. I still am for over fifty years. I worked as an apprentice, the journeym and a foreman and superintendent. But I very much valued my time in the field.

Was there one area of expertise you had as a carpenter.

No.

I tried to be a generalist.

I did concrete forms, I did drywall, I did framing, I did finished work mostly, and when I had the opportunity be superintendent, I had to learn about, you know, the other trades as well.

Mark hat a beautiful analogy for his time as a superintendent in which he was responsible for all these different trades, each doing their own thing, yet all leading towards the same end goal.

At its best, and it wasn't always at its best, but at his best it was like being a conductor of a symphony when you had got all the different trades to kind.

Of work together to create this.

You know, someone's vision in their head of an architect, and you actually made it.

I think it's a very exciting process.

And like anyone who spent enough time on our job site, Mark isn't short on stories.

So we got we got there on the on the first day and I said, well, w there's the plans and he said, well, we don't really actually have the plans. And I said, well, what do you mean. He says, I just fired the architect. So I said, well, how are we going to build this thing? And he says, well, we have the initial plans that we did and we'll

For the last twelve years of Mark's career, he became the head of the entire New England Carpenters Union.

I got a PhD in constructionology with all those experiences and the exposure to the issues of real estate development politics, and because it's really what happens with construction is kind of I think, the essence of what a community thinks about itself, how it's going to grow, how it's going to develop.

But when Mark reached retirement age, he didn't just hang up his hard helmet and pick up the golf clubs. Even after a fifty year career, Mark was still excited about the construction industry and he had a lot of knowledge that he wanted to share with others, and there were some very smart folks who were more than willing to listen.

I retired some years ago, sort of semi retired.

I guess.

And now I am a fellow at the Center for Labor and adjust Economy at Harvard Law School, and I use that platform to teach about labor and politics and labor history and also to write. I've written three books and numerous op eds articles on the topics of labor, politics, history, et cetera.

And Well, Mark didn't personally work on the buildings at Harvard, he knows a lot of the tradesmen and women who did. Yeah, do you ever find yourself at Harvard Law just, you know, looking at joinery or something like that, just drifting off.

Honestly, I do most of my work from home. I write, and I see a lot of it as remote. So, but you know, when I go there, the Harvard Law School is has quite the beautiful buildings, and almost all of those buildings were built by my friends in the trades.

Uh.

And I always admire the Uh. It's it's nice to be there to be teaching in a context of an environment that my colleagues and friends built.

Uh. And so that sort of brings it together.

But there are more than enough buildings all around Boston that Mark did get to work on.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean I think everybody who is a construction worker will go by, We'll drive around with their kids and say, you know, daddy worked on that or mommy worked on this, and it's it's a standard item. Uh, you know, sort of a joke but also a but a meaningful joke that people again, you know, I think that's part of the satisfaction of the work is that you can see that, you can point to to a structure that you helped create, and that's that's not a small thing.

And if Mark Rlick's predictions of a resilient economy that continues a long hold true, and this tool belt generation continues to turn to the trades, hopefully in a few years we'll have a lot more men and women driving their children around wherever it is they live in this country and pointing to a building, a bridge, or even an Ivy League school and saying, you see that, kids, I built that for on the job. I'm Avery Thompson