By Emma Peterson. 

From labor challenges to lead opportunities, Gene Marks shares insights on roofing economics. 

In the first episode of the Contractor Outlook newscast, Heidi J. Ellsworth meets with Gene Marks to talk about how economics intersect with the roofing industry. Gene is the CEO and president of the Marks Group PC, a technology consulting firm. Some of his additional credentials include “writing every week for The Guardian, The Hill, The Philly Enquirer, Washington Times, Chicago Daily Herald, Forbes and Entrepreneur.”  

In their conversation, Gene shared about the economic state in the United States, “Republican, Democrat, right, left, whatever you say, the economy has been going well. We've been experiencing growth, we had a dip in this last quarter in GDP, but unemployment has been at historic lows.” For the roofing and contracting industry, this means that people are doing well, as a generalization. But there are still two prevailing struggles, cost and labor. 

In the last few years, inflation has become a very serious sticking point and struggle for many, across multiple industries. Gene explained, “All of my clients and the industries that I speak to, some of their core costs, construction materials for concrete, for lumber, for roofing materials, things like that, they're in the double digits, sometimes as much as 20%, 30%, 40% compared to what they were a couple of years ago.” On top of this, there is the constant struggle with the labor shortage. Gene put it simply, “There's not enough people to get the work done, so everybody is struggling with that.” 

The good news is that the average American consumer’s income is currently staying ahead of inflation, meaning that there is still demand and Gene sees a boom coming for construction and roofing as interest rates start coming down. He explained, “I think there is this pent-up demand of people who are going to be buying and selling homes. And whenever you buy and sell a home, there's always upgrades and work that needs to be done.” 

Read the transcript, Listen to the podcast or Watch the recording to get the bigger economic perspective on the future of the roofing industry.