Arizona’s Homebuilding Revival Sparks Bidding Wars for Workers

While D.J. Hughes hunts for carpenters to join his team at a Phoenix-area house-framing company, competitors are tracking down his workers at building sites and offering them more money.

“Everybody is trying to pull crews from everyone,” said Hughes, 43, a project manager for J.L. Baugh Construction in Gold Canyon, Arizona, who admits to a couple attempts at poaching framers from rival contractors. “I’ve been doing this for a quarter of a century and this is the biggest shortage of skilled laborers I have ever seen.”