The gist of it: with each passing decade there's a growing shortage of construction laborers, resulting in large wait times for housing to be built. Some analysts wonder why the key demographic isn't showing up.
I've seen a few articles in the past few years about young men supposedly checking out of society and work, I wonder if there is a connection between that and this article here because young men tend to be the prime demographic for working this job.
Why should men go into construction which is a job that requires skill and actually working hard, when CA is now going to be paying skill-less fast food workers $20/hr?
Doing a quick search shows that even within CA the average pay rate is just $23/hr for construction workers and yet that job requires much more skill than someone flipping a burger.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. I promise you, without training, you would fail miserably when asked to crank out big macs all day for a living. Just like you would if you were tasked for any other "unskilled labor" that you haven't been trained to do. That means there is skill to it.
Unskilled labor is a myth created to justify paying human beings less than a living wage to line rich men's pockets.
You are foolishly equating a boring job with one that requires skill. If one can be trained in a job in an hour or two, that's a skill free job and is paid accordingly.