7 Construction Worker/Roofer
Even when the housing and general construction industry is booming, being one of the manual laborers who put in the backbreaking hours to make building ideas into realities is not a glamorous job.
Depending on your place of employment, you could find yourself spending hours in the Florida or Arizona heat laying tiles or roofing on a tar undercoat that does nothing but attract more heat, wishing that you had not partied away your Freshman year in college. Or, if you’re lucky, you may find a more mild climate in which to be employed on a construction crew, in which case you will still have the responsibilities of handling heavy, possibly dangerous equipment, dealing with the chronic pain that comes with daily heavy-lifting, and you must do it all while raking in a very modest wage.
With the average salary for a roofer being $34,220, one with a wife and family cannot be satisfied with his wage’s ability to feed even an average sized family, and the reality is that many construction workers are in their line of work because manual labor is their only legitimate option.
On top of these detracting factors, the housing market is still recovering at a snail’s pace, not inspiring news for hundreds of thousands unskilled laborers who previously made their living in construction but were crowded out because of practical halt in construction of new homes of late. But what about natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, don’t they provide plenty of relief opportunities for construction workers?
Yes, but like many of the jobs available today, these are temporal, and in the time between disasters there are far fewer steady jobs than in the fairly recent housing boom. The problem with construction,too, is that it is a nationally-repressed industry, and there is no oasis for new housing that these guys can migrate to in the direst of times. Construction is down nationally, and a job that was always undesirable because of danger, thankless work, and conditions has become more competitive and low-paying than ever.
