Patrick is right: build housing, among many other things.

My addendum a less-discussed part of housing twitter is the devastating impact that real estate booms & busts have on job security for construction workers, and these downstream effects on construction costs. [thread] https://twitter.com/ptraughber/status/1253371755982282752

Maintaining counter-cyclical housing development (read: ensuring steady investment by bolstering with public funds/programs during downturns) helps us maintain a robust skilled workforce when the economy is healthy, too.

A huge part of why construction costs balloon when the economy is good is that we’re set up every time to have a residual shortage in the training pipeline of skilled mechanical construction workers (electricians, pipefitters, operating engineers, etc.) from the last downturn.

When we ensure steady work for folks in good times and bad— private $$ in “good times,” infrastructure spending + other public investment in downturns— we don’t have to retrain/re-recruit the complex & sophisticated construction workforce every time the economy picks back up.

We often talk about “build housing” in terms of 1) shelter/infrastructure, 2) growing the tax base, 3) giving people access to opportunity in cities... and don’t talk enough about how a healthy, stable workforce directly impacts housing and construction prices down the line.

Most of the construction trades require significant training and apprenticeships, whether union or non-union (though training looks different for both). You don’t learn how to be an electrician or pipefitter overnight.

When the economy picks up after a downturn where there was no construction happening, housing or infrastructure or otherwise, we’ll often see a shortage of these skilled workers because the pipeline hollowed out when there was no construction work.

The experienced folks who are in the position to train the youngins either move to places with faster recovery or leave the trade altogether.

Young folks don’t enter the construction pipeline in the first place because there aren’t enough jobs where they can apprentice onsite.

So we have to start over. Every time. Re-recruit and retrain a huge part of the workforce.

It’s exciting for boom times, and devastating in downturns.

...but a lot of this volatility can be smoothed by doing what we can to keep folks safely working construction in a recession!

TL;DR— maintain a steady flow of construction work in downturns, and 1) workers will be better off, and 2) construction costs will *also* be lower during subsequent economic booms.

(The hitch during COVID/pandemic times is that construction workers, like everyone else, deserve safe job sites and conditions that don’t put them at risk of transmission. I don’t have the answer to this for right now— there are people far smarter than me who might.)