As the economic landscape of the United States shifts to recover from the recession, there is a growing trend away from white collar trades. While ten years ago, a college degree in law, business or medicine seemed both the preferred and often necessary route to professional and financial success, these fields are becoming increasingly more difficult to find employment in. Furthermore, the years spent in lower levels of these occupations as apprentices and junior associates is increasing, while the pay bracket is getting smaller and smaller on both ends. The only thing becoming greater in fact, is the desolution of firms and loss of pre-existing jobs. This is inherently because such careers depend heavily on the amount of capital moving through the economy. In simplistic terms, if there is less money flowing, less people are needed to manage it.

Because of this decline, more young people are considering training in trade skills to start work in technical careers. Going through a certification course, or a one or two year technical school program can prepare you to be a licensed electrician, carpenter, or plumber. Jobs like this often include union membership, insuring reasonable hours and reasonable pay. Even when the economy is less that wonderful, new construction will always need the skills of such tradesman, as will older buildings that need maintenance.

This shift in focus is actually very good, both for the construction industry and the economy at large. Flooding the field with fresh, new blood cultivates growth within form of these jobs, expanding the work traditionally done. It also allows for more workers to become proficient and experienced at a younger age, allowing efficiency and skill to grow with time. Younger workers will also tend to be more willing to learn about new technologies and keep themselves up to date with the needs of the consumer. This availability may aid in the growth of the industry, creating more work and more jobs in the future.

Economically speaking, the shorter training time of technical trades – about two years in comparison to the four, eight and even ten year education programs of universities, means that more individuals of a younger age will move out of the dependence of family and education loans sooner. They will experience job placement faster and begin earning money with more alacrity, resulting in the possibility of surplus capital to spend. The lack of student – loan based debt frees up money to be infused into the market. People then have reasonable wealth sooner, not only to spend on luxury items, but sustainable capital that can grow, like real estate, land property and stocks. To add to the economic incentives, many workers with careers in construction and trade report a great deal of satisfaction with their jobs, meaning that they enjoy the completion of tasks, and find the work-load to be manageable. Ironically, this might mean that, as a country, we need more Lawyers and Business men again, though it will be a combination of trade work and small business that we have to thank for our recovery.

It used to be, even a few decades ago, that if you were installing or repairing a system and you came across an obstacle or quandary that your training didn’t prepare you for, you only had a few places to turn. While manuals, texts, and your immediate colleagues are still wonderful resources when you find yourself in a pickle, more and more laborers in technical professions are turning to online forums to help solve difficult questions.

As internet access has grown, chat rooms and forums have appeared on all sorts of topics, professional and otherwise. These forums are websites and interfaces where individuals can leave posts or start threads around particular topics in relationship to a theme. Much like collections of information that are built by any one who wishes to contribute, (as in Wikipedia), these forums can be dense libraries of experiential knowledge, but also have their pitfalls. Electrician forums are no exception to the rule. With their given names or under pseudonyms, electricians all over the world bring up topics important to the profession at large. These online locales are excellent places to air out career ideas and concerns, as the writer has adequate time to reflect on the topic at hand and express themselves sufficiently. As standards are often different from nation to nation, the world-wide floor of the internet provides the broadest possible scope for open conversation and solution. These matters range anywhere from what electrical staffing agency one should use to expanding areas of the field and where and how to gain further certification and education.

Beyond the camaraderie and usefulness of profession-wide topics, there is also a huge opportunity for specific problems to be solved in online forums. With the new popularity of smart phones and tablets that are capable of taking high-quality pictures with ease, more and more electricians are able to effectively communicate what they are dealing with and might need advice on. These devices also expedite the pace at which quandaries can be posted and solutions can be found. This fast access has the potential to improve the skills of electricians as well as the condition of the work done.

It is important, however, to exercise some degree of caution. Just like all things online, there is always a chance that the person advising you is not who they say they are, or may be exaggerating their expertise. To ensure the information you get is good, seek out forums that have a more limited access. Often, electrician staffing agencies will have a forum for those contractors that they have deemed fit to employ. Otherwise, electrician forums in which you need to register and provide a company name or certificate information are good choices because individuals can be held accountable for their credentials. If you are, in fact, seeking the answer to a specific question or problem, be as descriptive as possible and try to survey a variety of answers and solutions to find the best one. Remember that while jobs are often posted on such sites, electrical staffing agencies remain more reliable and career-supportive.

Organizations that work in construction staffing provide important services to the construction industry at large. Generally, such companies allow for workers in various construction fields to represent themselves as possible job applicants to individuals and contractors who are looking for employees for specific projects. Occupations are broad, including short term laborers, welders, carpenters, plumbers, engineers, and even clerical workers and supervisors. Whether the projects are large scale, or smaller jobs involving installation or restoration work, applicants have the opportunity to offer the full description of their skills. This allows for individuals in construction to cast the biggest possible net for jobs, and thus heightens their chances of landing payable work.

Construction staffing services are not only invaluable to job-seeking workers, but also to the companies and individuals seeking to employ them. By creating an intermediary between hirer and hiree, construction staffing saves the employer the time and cost of screening for appropriately skilled workers. Such services also create speed and efficiency by promoting an organized forum with which to match up the right employer with a right employee.

Such staffing organizations have been particularly well streamlined in the last 10-15 years through the integration of computer networking and internet access. Often accounting for location, travel and access to resumes and job reviews, staffing a project can be as simple as typing a few key search words into a database. By applying resume templates and questions, it has become easier for those seeking work to accurately represent themselves to future employers. With more people owning smartphones and wireless tablets and computers, the speed at which job information can be shared has greatly improved. Construction workers don’t miss out on the work that they are qualified for and project organizers can hire and provide a finished product faster. Particularly in times of a recovering economy and nationwide unemployment, these results are crucial not only on an individual level, but also on larger, country-wide scale.

Furthermore, companies that provide construction staffing services contribute greatly to Productivity Improvement, an idea receiving growing attention from the construction management industry. Broken down, Productivity is the ratio of how much work is getting done in comparison to how much effort is expended. Generally, the fewer hours spent in labor the greater the efficiency of the particular project. Studies in labor efficiency have identified that the major factors to improving productivity are housekeeping, and the enforcement of the rules of conduct. The more orderly the project, the more productive it will be. When project organizers seek workers through construction staffing agencies, they are more likely to both communicate the expectations of the work, and to find laborers capable of adhering to those expectations. Because many construction staffing companies also provide access to training and certification programs, workers can expand their skill sets, and employers can hire fewer workers who can complete multiple components of each project and maintain awareness of the greater picture. In this fashion, construction staffing companies provide services of varying beneficiaries and scope.