Economy
The Housing Crisis Is a Building Crisis
Construction industry productivity in the U.S. is lower today than it was in 1968—and it won’t pick up unless it can embrace modernization.
There’s at least one thing many urbanists and Donald Trump appear to agree about: America is indeed stuck in a building crisis. Its infrastructure is dilapidated and failing, and housing prices are surging in a superstar economy in part because we don’t build enough of it.
But it is not just sagging federal spending or onerous land use restrictions that are to blame. America’s construction industry face a staggering productivity crisis. And it’s not just a U.S. issue: A report released today by the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that global productivity in the construction industry has stagnated.