The sharp crack of hammers drubbing nails echos between the walls of Rob Materni’s classroom at Waite High School.

Tall and lean with closely shorn hair, Mr. Materni hovers from student to student, handing out praise and advice. A former journeyman carpenter, he now teaches the trade to students.

“People think of it as a specialized skill but there are so many different areas,” he said. “They need carpenters on the roads, on commercial work. They need residential carpenters. They need carpenters who can do interior systems, who can frame, who can do finish work.”

But though the jobs are out there, the carpenters themselves are in short supply.

More than 70 percent of U.S. contractors recently surveyed by the Associated General Contractors of America say they are struggling to fill carpentry positions. The problem is even more acute in Ohio, with 90 percent of contractors reporting similar problems.

Carpentry is the most extreme case, but experts and contractors say there’s a manpower shortage in nearly all the skilled trades across the country. The trade group found 86 percent of contractors have had difficulty filling some positions.

“It’s this weird thing where we went almost overnight from not having enough work to not having enough workers,” said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the trade association.

That includes in northwest Ohio, where local union officials are doubling down on outreach to the point of producing professional videos and posting ads on Craigslist saying skilled trades positions can pay, depending on consistent work through the year, $40,000 to $60,000 a year.

“The need for manpower is so much here we created a website to attract people to our area because of how much work we have going on,” said Shaun Enright, executive secretary and business manager of Northwest Ohio Building Trades Council.

Mr. Enright said just three of the many upcoming projects — ProMedica’s downtown headquarters, its Toledo Hospital tower, and a maintenance shutdown at the BP-Husky Refinery — will require more workers than the area has.

To address that, the council developed a nearly four-minute video highlighting the region’s opportunities for work and recreation.

“We’ve actually invested quite a bit in recruiting a work force here to Toledo. For the next three to four years, we’re going to be very busy,” Mr. Enright said.

Anecdotally, Mr. Turmail said the Associated General Contractors is hearing about higher-than-expected bids on some projects and some companies not bidding on work because they aren’t certain they can secure the staffing.

For now, local contracting companies say they’ve been able to find enough workers to meet their obligations, but they are concerned.

“The industry’s starting to get busy and there’s been a lot of stress on that,” said Steven Johnson, vice president and business manager at the Lathrop Co. “In the last four years, a lot of people have left or retired from the industry, and they’re not coming back and we’re not seeing young people considering the career. We’ll have some challenges going forward.”

A spokesman for Rudolph Libbe Group expressed similar concerns, particularly about the coming wave of retirements from baby boomers.

That’s a big part of the current crunch for skilled trade work, though there are a number of other factors.

Construction is always cyclical, but the devastation that hit the industry in the Great Recession sent many workers packing for other careers or the oil patches out west.

One of the biggest issues, though, is that decades of schools, parents, and culture telling children they couldn’t have a career without going to college has finally caught up with us.

“There’s a mind-set that’s been out there in schoolkids for a lot of years that college was your only option after high school. You had to go to college. A lot of them, they didn’t really realize there were options out there,” said Jeff Bockbrader, a senior representative with the Indiana Kentucky Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters.

Mr. Bockbrader, who works from Rossford at the Ohio Carpenters’ Joint Apprenticeship and Training Program, said they’ve gone as far as posting ads on Craigslist to recruit people with experience to their apprenticeship program.

They’re also working closely with schools, including Toledo Public, to attract younger people.

It seems they’re making progress. Mr. Bockbrader said the number of carpenter apprentices has almost doubled in the last 12 months to about 350. There are about 2,300 journeyman carpenters in northwest Ohio.

Educators are also getting on board and rethinking how career technology programs are cast, and government is rethinking how they’re funded.

“It’s a great time for career tech right now, more than I’ve ever seen before,” said Daphne Derden-Willis, director of career tech at Toledo Public Schools. “The paradigm is beginning to finally shift in that they see career tech as a career option.”

In Mr. Materni’s classroom, a dozen seniors were building a stud wall. Some carefully made cuts, some plucked chalk lines, others drove in nails.

He has about 40 students split among his three classes. Some are considering college, some aren’t. Some are thinking about joining the military. A handful are serious about pursuing carpentry.

Mr. Materni is happy to help them with whatever they want to do, though he tries to impress upon them the careers possible through carpentry.

“I want them to understand more about the lifestyle they can live by doing this, the opportunities. I built my own house,” he said. “You’re going to be able to provide for your family. They can relate to that.”

An entry-level apprentice starts at $12.78 and within two years is making more than $21 an hour. After completing the four-year apprenticeship program, which includes more than 4,500 hours of work and 600 hours of classroom time, they earn a journeyman’s card. Journeymen are paid $28.40 an hour, plus health care and pension.

Over his four years at TPS, he’s seen about a dozen of his students get into the union apprenticeship program. Most are still in the program. Mr. Materni stuck with his students, lobbying contractors he worked with or knew, or even cold calling others to help get them jobs.

“The ball is rolling,” he said. “It’s been a process over the years, but it’s a gradual improvement every year. I don’t know if I’m getting better kids or I’m doing a better job teaching them, but every year my program gets a little bit better and I’m seeing better results.”

Taking a break from marking off plates, student Amblerlee Hunsaker explained that she initially disregarded the class as uninteresting, but found she liked the hands-on aspect and is now planning to pursue carpentry as a career.

“It’s actually something that I’ve learned to enjoy and I’m good at it,” she said.

The money prospect helps, too.

“Right after high school, going as an apprentice, you’re making more than $12 an hour. That’s something most kids don’t get right out of high school,” she said. “I think it’s a great opportunity and I’m going to take good advantage of it.”

Contact Tyrel Linkhorn at tlinkhorn@theblade.com or 419-724-6134 or on Twitter @BladeAutoWriter.

First Published November 1, 2015, 4:09 a.m.