Oregon Enterprise – Hovering Temperatures, Dearth of Expert Employees Forge Excellent Storm for HVAC Distributors

The Oregon HVAC industry struggled to withstand the record breaking heat

Phones rang at Southern Oregon Heat and Air Conditioning in Medford last weekend in June as meteorological records melted across the state of Oregon.

The company’s small crew worked around the clock to meet demand. Over the weekend, the company gained 50 customers but received 500 calls a day, turning away many potential customers.

“We had people calling and saying how unhappy and how hot they were and I had to say, ‘Look, I feel awful, but our crew works a 12-hour shift seven days a week,'” says Jesse Phillips, a dispatcher at the heating and air conditioning company. “We could only do so much.”

During the heat wave, temperatures rose to 117 degrees in some areas of the state – causing HVAC companies across the state to scramble to keep up with the sudden demand for services.

“Before the heat wave, there wasn’t really a pile of service orders,” said Brian Hansen, general manager of Bull Mountain Heating & Cooling in Portland. “People weren’t prepared for the temperature and the stress was high. What happened was this big bubble that put a lot of pressure on the industry, ”says Hansen.

In Portland, only 70% of households have air conditioning, according to data from the US Census Bureau. That makes Portland one of the least air-conditioned cities in the United States – third to last behind Seattle and San Francisco.

Those on lower incomes were less likely to have air conditioning at home, leaving many Oregonians looking for oases like cooling centers or air-conditioned accommodations – or heading to cooler parts of the state.

But not everyone was able to do it, and the results were tragic: by Tuesday morning, 99 people across the state had died from heat-related causes during the heat wave. Many, officials said, were found alone in their homes with no air conditioning or fans. Hundreds of others sought emergency care when temperatures rose.

And even households and businesses with air conditioning couldn’t necessarily keep them waiting: of the five HVAC companies contacted for this item, four stopped accepting new customers.

That’s because the HVAC industry, like many others, is faced with a staff shortage – so business owners are understaffed even in their services.

“We’re trying to get as many people into the industry as possible. We pay to take in a lot of people and pay for their schooling, ”says Hansen. “There aren’t many hands here.”

Hansen says he will always recruit and train qualified people who want to become HVAC technicians, but that he and his colleagues in the industry are struggling to find enough employees.

“Not a lot of people want to train outside in the heat,” says Phillips. “We lost a technician in our crew. Everyone in the industry has problems filling positions. ”

A 2019 report by the State Department of Labor found that craftsmen, including plumbers, truck drivers and maintenance workers, were viewed as “difficult to fill positions” because they could not be filled due to a lack of qualified applicants.

Northwest Apprenticeship Services’ apprentice administrator Lou Long said that Oregon’s skills shortage was a long time coming.

“I wasn’t even allowed to go to high school career fairs for a long time. Everyone was pushing for colleges and nobody wanted to hear about apprenticeships and vocational schools, ”says Long. “Now all of our journeymen are retiring and we have no one to fill this gap.”

That could mean that more homeowners and landlords are foregoing or doing without basic maintenance due to a lack of qualified hands.

But that trend could also be reversed due to COVID-19 and rising college costs. According to a 2020 analysis by the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of citizen apprenticeships exceeded 636,000 in 2020, a 64% increase from 10 years ago.

President Joe Biden’s administration has also signaled support for craft training: the American Jobs Plan, if it goes into effect, will allocate $ 48 billion to train workers, including the creation of “one to two million new ones registered apprenticeships “.

Training can take up to six years, but on-the-job training and booming demand could put an end to the skills shortage in Oregon quickly.

The more lucrative the trade work becomes, the more attractive it could be to high school students who are unable or unwilling to take on large college debt.

If the historic heat of the weekend – and climate models that predict an increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including extreme heat and cold – are any indication, the need for reliable heating and cooling systems will become even more important for Oregonians in the near future. And that means the demand for skilled HVAC technicians will continue to grow.

“If journeymen don’t work, it’s their own fault,” says Long. “The demand is huge.”

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