One of the great puzzles of our current economic troubles is how come construction employment has held up so well. The answer is simple. There is such a shortage of skilled tradesmen that a slow down just means that some of them finally get to work a 40 hour week. That means they are making less money then they where before, but they are still employed.
According to survey respondents, contractors are devising a variety of strategies to overcome the shortfalls. Almost half the respondents reported a weekly work schedule of more than 40 hours. Two-thirds reported working their crews five days every week, and some schedules of 70 or more hours per week were reported.
The corollary to this that most of construction done recently is crap. There was not enough good people to do all the work being done even if the all the constructions companies had wanted to do good work. When people get done being outrage by all the obvious financial fraud that paid for boom, they are going to find that things were not done to any higher ethical standard on the bricks and motor end.