NEW YORK CITY—The coming year or two could be a momentous time for the construction trades, and therefore the contractors that employ them and, in turn, the developers that hire the contractors. It's within that time frame that the spikes in construction costs deriving from a chronic shortage of qualified labor could become more acute.

“It's a trend that has been coming for some time and has been exacerbated in different locations, but has now become a national issue,” Julian Anderson, president of consulting firm Rider Levett Bucknall, tells GlobeSt.com. The current shortage—widely acknowledged in the construction industry—had its origins in the peak of the previous cycle, he says.

“During the big boom we had in construction between 2002 and 2006, especially in housing, the numbers of people working in construction grew substantially,” Anderson says. “But even then, the number of workers available was inadequate, so a lot of the additional work was being done through overtime. The industry was very busy, people were working crazy hours—and then everything imploded, other than residential, and people left the construction industry. Architects and engineers left the business, but it this was especially true in the trades.”