Ask a room full of elementary school students what they want to be when they grow up, and you'll hear everything from an astronaut, doctor, maybe a princess or a superhero. Children have plenty of imagination, but they tend to name the jobs they've seen, and very few have likely seen what a career in construction can look like. Changing that takes employers, schools and parents showing young people what the industry offers, long before they have to decide what comes next.
Multiple people did that for me. My grandmother ran a general contracting business for more than 30 years, and when I was in school, a teacher's husband, who owned a construction company, saw promise in me and gave me the chance to learn the trade firsthand. With both of them
in my corner, I studied construction management in college and built a career I might never have considered.In my experience as a mentor, most young people don't have that kind of guidance. They know construction exists, but they may not have had anyone show them what it could look like as a career path—and that gap has tangible effects on our industry.Nationally, workers under 25 make up just 9.4% of the construction workforce, while workers 55 and older make up 22.7%. That means there are fewer than half as many young workers coming up as there are workers nearing retirement, and Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the industry must attract about 349,000 new workers this year alone just to keep up with the retirees.Here in Savannah, the need is even more pressing. The region's population has grown 47% since 2000, and every new resident needs housing, schools, roads and the infrastructure a growing city depends on. At Samet, we see that demand firsthand on the Low country projects like The Line in the Historic District, The Little School at Savannah Country Day and Hubert Middle School for SCCPSS.
Part of the challenge is perception. When most people picture construction, they see hard hats and heavy machinery. Skilled tradespeople are the backbone of every project, but they work alongside human resources and IT professionals, safety and quality specialists, drone pilots and designers who model entire buildings digitally before crews ever break ground. Whatever a young person is interested in, there's likely a place in construction. Showing them that full picture falls to employers, schools and parents alike.
Nobody understands this work better than the people doing it, so it's on us to open the door. That's why Samet brings K-12 students onto our job sites for trades days, and why we go into classrooms to show them how to read a tape measure, work with 3D models, and ask us anything. Through our partnership with RISE, the Savannah region's workforce development organization, we help connect young people to construction careers, and we meet the next generation where they are: at college career fairs, in partnership with colleges, universities, and technical colleges, and through our All-Star Internship program.
Local schools are building those pathways too. Windsor Forest High School offers a Construction/Electrical program that prepares students for residential and commercial construction careers, and Savannah High School's STEAM Career Academy includes welding and drafting and design. Statewide, Georgia has also added seven architecture and construction pathways to its CTAE+ program, from welding to HVAC, letting students earn core graduation credit while building job-ready skills. Programs like these give students hands-on experience before they've committed to a path, and they grow stronger when local employers show up to support them.
Parents, and families in general, play an equally important role in this. Pay attention to what your kids already enjoy. Plenty of children build entire cities in Roblox and Minecraft, which isn't far from what an architect does when designing a development or conceptual design. That interest may lead to construction, or it may not, but it deserves to be taken seriously. Take your kids to career exploration days and ask your friends about their work while your children are listening. My son only wants to work in construction today because he's walked job sites with me and seen what's possible from a young age.
Someday, today's kids will outgrow their dreams of becoming princesses and superheroes. When that time comes, construction should be one of the careers they grew up knowing was possible, so it's on us, the adults in their lives, to make sure it is.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Every child should grow up knowing a career in construction is possible
