Installation Dilemma: With the industry bringing in new installers, dealers must give them a reason—and a path—to stay – Sept 2026

By Meg Scarbrough

A young person discovers flooring installation, enrolls in a training program and decides the trade might offer the kind of career he or she had been looking for. The student learns the fundamentals, finishes the program and is ready to work. Then comes a question Fred Black believes the flooring industry has not fully answered: Who hires that person?

When Black talks with community colleges about implementing flooring programs, he says one of the first questions is what apprenticeship opportunities exist locally. “What retailers are going to provide apprenticeship programs for these graduates?” asks Black, chief operating officer of USA Flooring and a board member of the Floor Covering Education Foundation (FCEF). “Well, there really aren’t any.”

That matters because introductory training is exactly that—an introduction. In an industry where much of the installation workforce operates as independent contractors, the traditional path has often required installers to eventually operate as small-business owners themselves. A 19-year-old emerging from a flooring program may have learned the basics, but Black says it is unrealistic to expect that person to immediately buy a van, acquire tools and insurance, learn to run a business and become an independent flooring contractor. 

“They clearly don’t have the skill sets or knowledge or credit history to become entrepreneurs right out of the gate,” he says. “They need mentors. We, the business leaders in the retail space, have to help mentor these kids and wrap our arms around them so the industry doesn’t lose them.”

The challenge is measurable. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that flooring installers and tile and stone setters held about 97,000 jobs in 2025 and projects roughly 6,400 openings a year through 2035, many of them created as workers leave the occupation or retire. Filling those openings requires more than attracting people to the trade. New entrants need time, training and experience before they can replace the skilled installers who are leaving it.

Dave Meberg, president and CEO of Consolidated Flooring, has worked in commercial flooring for more than four decades and has spent much of that career involved with INSTALL, the floorcovering training and certification program affiliated with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC). He has heard the term “installation crisis” for as long as he can remember. 

“I’ve heard about this installation crisis for 40 years,” he says. “My entire career, I’ve been living this installation crisis.”

Yet Meberg, whose company operates as a union contractor in major metropolitan markets, says something has changed. For most of his career, installation availability was a problem he largely watched from a distance because the union apprenticeship system continually supplied trained mechanics. Today, even that system is under pressure as experienced installers retire faster than replacements are entering.

“For the first time in my 40-year history, I’m concerned about the union’s ability to keep up with the demand,” he says. “I’ve never had that concern before.”

The flooring industry has spent much of the last decade trying to make young people aware that installation is a career. FCEF has pushed flooring programs into technical schools and community colleges. Manufacturers have funded training and workforce initiatives. Installation organizations continue to teach existing mechanics and new entrants.

Those efforts are creating a front door into the trade. The larger question is what sits behind it.

For this story, Floor Focus spoke with retailers and contractors responsible for building and managing installation workforces, as well as leaders in training and manufacturing, about what has to happen after a new installer enters the trade.

THE PIPELINE FLOORING NEVER BUILT

For much of the flooring industry’s history, installer development was decidedly informal.

Don Roberts, president and CEO of Central Alabama Flooring and one of the retail leaders who helped launch FCEF, remembers a system built around the installer-helper relationship. An installer brought someone onto jobs; that person learned by watching and working, eventually began installing independently and could then take on a helper of his own.

It was hardly standardized training, and Roberts jokes that knowledge diminished along the way.

“The helper would learn 70% of what the guy that he worked for knew, and he’d become an installer, and then he’d teach his helper only 70% of what he knew,” he says. “That was not a good solution. But that’s how we operated for years.”

It nevertheless produced capable workers. Over time, fewer experienced installers were willing to take on helpers.

Roberts says experienced installers increasingly decided that helpers created additional problems and that they were better off working alone. A mechanic could take fewer jobs, avoid managing another person and still make a good living.

“What happened there?” Roberts asks. “We’re not training the next generation to come into the flooring business as helpers.”

At the same time, vocational education was losing visibility in schools, and flooring had never created anything comparable to the established pathways associated with electrical, plumbing or HVAC.

Kaye Whitener, executive director of FCEF, believes the industry largely allowed installation to develop apart from the rest of the flooring business. “We, as an industry, have really kind of left installation up to its own little world,” she says. “Through manufacturing and retail and commercial, I think we’ve negated the importance. In fact, we can’t even sell our products correctly if they’re not installed correctly.”

Today, flooring is recruiting in a very different environment. Young people interested in skilled work already know what electricians and plumbers do. Technical schools have long-established programs for many trades, and those trades often come with licensing requirements and recognizable career ladders.

Flooring often begins one step earlier: explaining that the occupation exists. David Gross, executive director of INSTALL, sees that firsthand even within the broader union trades. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters recruits for several occupations, and flooring has to compete for attention.

“There are so many people who have no idea what flooring installation actually means or does,” Gross says. “I always joke that one day when I hit it rich, I’m going to put together a TV sitcom where somebody, a character, is a floor installer—just to raise the profile.” 

FCEF was created in part to build the pipeline that never existed. Whitener says the organization now has flooring programs operating in dozens of schools, giving students a place to encounter installation before somebody happens to introduce them to an installer with a van. 

Jeff Wright, Shaw Industries’ vice president of innovation and engineering, says the industry’s approach has begun to shift.

“A few years ago, much of the industry’s focus was on raising awareness of the installer shortage,” he says. “Now, we’re seeing progress in training programs, technical college partnerships, scholarships, recruiting initiatives and job placement efforts that are helping build a stronger talent pipeline.”

The next stage begins once those students leave the classroom.

TRAINING IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

Recruiting someone into flooring and preparing that person to work independently are two very different assignments. INSTALL’s apprenticeship illustrates the difference.

INSTALL’s floorcovering apprenticeship runs four years. New entrants can arrive directly from high school or after changing careers, often with no construction experience. Apprentices spend most of their time working for contractors alongside experienced mechanics, periodically leaving the field for concentrated classroom training. Pay and status rise as they progress.

“If you come in with a good attitude and the ability to do physical labor, we can teach you how to be a floor layer,” Gross says.

By the time an INSTALL apprentice reaches journey level, the training record follows that person. Work experience is documented. Schooling is documented. Manufacturer training can become part of the record.

That structure answers questions that are much harder in portions of the residential market: Who hires the beginner? Who pays the beginner while skills develop? Who decides when that person is ready for more complex work? Who provides the next lesson?

John Gillespie, principal account executive at LBJ Interior Solutions and board chairman of the Floor Covering Installation Contractors Association (FCICA), is trying to answer those questions inside his own company. 

LBJ, a New Jersey union contractor, pairs its first-year apprentices with seasoned foremen. Gillespie wants the senior mechanic to teach installation, but he also expects something broader. Gillespie wants foremen to teach more than the hands-on skills of installation. He says apprentices also need to learn how to carry themselves professionally, communicate with clients and manage their time.

“It’s all the kind of things that make you, I don’t even want to say a better flooring installer from an ownership standpoint, but just a better person overall,” he says.

For Black, that is the piece retailers have to begin considering as the educational pipeline grows. FCEF can give a new entrant fundamentals. It cannot turn a beginner into a seasoned craftsperson in a matter of weeks. Retailers, he says, have to decide whether they are prepared to participate in the next stage.

“You start small,” Black says. “You start with two crews, and you work out all the kinks, and you get them vans, and you make sure that they’re trained, and that you put them through the proper training, and you have proper oversight on the jobsite with experienced installers that are watching them and teaching them and developing them.”

He envisions development happening over time. A new employee might begin with carpet, learn hard surface, add another category and eventually become capable of running a crew.

“You’re a year or two in,” he says, “and now he’s running the crew, or she’s running the crew.”

For dealers accustomed to purchasing installation as needed, that requires an investment well before a new employee reaches full productivity.

It also creates a concern Black hears from dealers: What happens if the retailer spends money developing someone who eventually leaves, becomes an independent contractor or goes to a competitor?

Black understands the hesitation, but he does not believe it can become a reason to avoid training.

“We have to treat our flooring technicians very well,” he says. “They are just as important to our company as an RSA, as a branch manager, as the COO, as the CFO. I would argue that they’re probably more important.”

The language itself is beginning to change. Black prefers “flooring technician” to installer because he believes the title better reflects the knowledge expected on the job.

“We have to treat that role like it’s a profession,” he says.

WHO EMPLOYS THE NEXT INSTALLER?

Treating installation as a profession also raises a more fundamental question: What kind of employment structure gives new installers a place to build that career?

Gross believes flooring’s dependence on independent contractors sits near the center of its workforce-development problem.

Someone who wants to become an electrician can reasonably expect to seek employment with an electrical contractor. In flooring, particularly on the residential side, Gross says becoming a mechanic has often come bundled with becoming self-employed.

“I just don’t think many people that want to get into the trade may want to also have to own a business to do it,” he says. “Then you’re taking on all the tax liability. You have to get your own health insurance. There’s no retirement plan. There’s none of that.”

To Gross, employment creates stability that the 1099 structure does not. INSTALL apprentices work as employees, and journeymen retain access to healthcare and retirement benefits through the union system. Contractors get a workforce they can train and develop.

Gross also believes the old helper pipeline deteriorated partly because businesses kept pushing responsibility further down the chain.

“Nobody wants to be responsible for the healthcare, for the unemployment cost, for the job problem issues, any of that,” he says. “So, they feel as if they can just get an independent contractor to handle it.”

Roberts sees the economics differently. Central Alabama Flooring uses both employees and subcontractors. Roughly a third of Roberts’ installers are employees, and he does not believe a dealer necessarily should—or even can—convert every installation position to payroll.

Flooring volume changes. The installer capacity needed during a heavy period can become expensive overhead when business slows.

His recommendation is to build enough employee labor to handle the dependable core of the company’s work, then rely on subcontractors when demand rises beyond that level.

“Figure out what 75% of your work need is that you’re doing all the time, and hire enough installers to cover that,” Roberts says. “When business goes up, you’ll pull on some subs to handle the ebb and flow. And if it goes back down, you’re keeping your guys busy.” 

Roberts still pays his employee installers by the piece rather than by the hour, while making sure compensation meets applicable wage requirements. He believes piece compensation rewards productivity and preserves some of the economic incentive installers are accustomed to under subcontract arrangements.

Black is heading toward a similar structure at USA Flooring, though he is careful to say he does not yet know the ideal ratio.

“I am not advocating for eliminating independent contractors,” he says. “I’m advocating for intentional workforce design.” For him, that means building employee installation capacity as an asset while maintaining subcontract relationships for flexibility.

“Our business is cyclical,” he says. “During your slower months, you use your employee installers, and then you depend on your 1099s—you subsidize your labor during the peak months because you can’t staff for 100%.”

The hybrid approach also gives the dealer something Black believes is difficult to obtain when all labor sits outside the business: greater control over training, scheduling and quality.

That does not make subcontractors inherently lower quality. Many of the industry’s most experienced craftspeople have spent their careers as independent contractors, and Roberts says some older mechanics have little interest in becoming employees after decades of running their work that way.

A veteran installer who already owns tools, transportation and a business enters the arrangement from a very different position than a teenager coming out of an introductory program.

Commercial union contractors operate under labor structures that bear little resemblance to many independent residential dealers, and flooring volume itself resists a single staffing formula. But whether a beginner becomes an employee, apprentice or eventually an independent contractor, someone has to absorb the cost of developing that person.

A CAREER HAS TO LEAD SOMEWHERE

Recruitment gets easier when people can see where the job might take them.

Gillespie says that visibility is still weak even inside a structured commercial environment. Flooring installation may offer a good living, but students entering the trades do not always recognize the advancement possibilities. At LBJ, the company tries to make them explicit.

“I can come from being a guy that’s offloading a truck to installing, to running projects, to having a crew that works underneath me, to being a road super, to then coming into project management,” Gillespie says. “That’s absolutely a career path that we try to push to our installers.”

He sees growth as part of retention. “The only way we can do that is showing them growth,” he says.

Gross sees the same possibilities within INSTALL’s network. A journey-level floor layer does not necessarily spend an entire career physically installing flooring. Experienced mechanics move into supervision, estimating, manufacturer technical positions and business ownership.

That matters in a physically demanding occupation. Flooring needs people to remain in the industry long enough for their accumulated knowledge to become an asset rather than walking out the door when their bodies can no longer tolerate full-time installation.

Black believes the current aging workforce presents an opportunity for precisely that reason. 

“We have extremely knowledgeable people in their 50s and 60s that have been installing flooring for a long time, and they’re ready to share their knowledge with the next generation,” he says. “Their bodies are worn out, so they’re ready to not be on the floor doing installation but teaching and observing and developing the next generation.”

That transition preserves knowledge that otherwise leaves with the mechanic and gives experienced installers another place to go. Installation management needs the same attention.

WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL INSTALLATION WORTH?

Meberg sees a contradiction in the way the flooring industry talks about skilled labor. The industry wants installation to be treated as a profession, he says, while parts of the market continue selling “free installation,” promoting free padding and negotiating labor downward.

“They don’t assign any value to installation,” Meberg says. “The material that is sold—they’re installed products. The ultimate client, the consumer, gets no value from their purchase until the product’s properly installed.”

Gross points out that flooring installation has a stubborn productivity constraint: there is only so much material one person can physically install in a day.

“If the wages and the price per foot or price per yard don’t keep up with inflation, it’s devastating to the installer because a typical installer can really only install so much material in a day,” Gross says. 

If the installer’s costs rise, he cannot simply respond by laying dramatically more flooring. “You can’t do that,” Gross says. “You have to increase the installation price.”

The problem becomes more acute when quality is difficult for the buyer to distinguish. Gross says commercial specifications may call for a certain level of experience or qualification, but those requirements are not always verified. When competency is not meaningfully differentiated, labor becomes easier to buy primarily on price.

“The easiest one to negotiate with, and the easiest one to chisel down, and the easiest one to find a replacement for, is the installer,” Gross says. “If you don’t care about the quality, if you don’t have the quality assurance, if you don’t verify the bona fides, then whoever you can get at the lowest price is the one you want.”

Meberg has spent years pushing the industry to attach more marketplace value to training and certification. INSTALL’s program requires years of training and continuing education, yet Meberg argues that credentials still do not consistently create enough differentiation in the market. He would like to see manufacturers place more weight behind qualified installation, including through warranty structures.

“They’ll fund it,” he says of manufacturer training support. “They’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, here’s some money. Go out and train some installers.’ But unless they perhaps put some teeth in their warranties, then there’s no motivation for the consumer or the retailer to sell installation properly.”

Manufacturers also have a role in raising the value of professional installation, though neither Wright nor Alfredo Donjuan, Mohawk’s vice president and general manager of accessories, addressed Meberg’s warranty proposal specifically. Both point to responsibilities that extend beyond producing the flooring itself.

Wright says elevating the trade requires more than simply calling installation professional work. “When we position installers as essential professionals—and back that up with training, respect, fair compensation and long-term opportunity—we make the trade more attractive, more sustainable and more valued across the industry,” he says.

Donjuan also acknowledges that manufacturers contribute to the technical demands installers face. “We keep coming up with innovations and making flooring in a different way,” he says. “At some point, we’ve been running, and the installers have been behind.”

For Donjuan, that creates an obligation to work more directly with installers, understand what they are encountering in the field and help them adjust to changing systems and products.

The commercial market offers examples of how expertise can carry value beyond the labor number itself. Gillespie says LBJ is rarely the lowest bidder, but price is not always decisive because the contractor often enters projects early, helping end users and architects with specifications and budgets.

“While, yes, price is a factor, I also think industry relationships and helping specifications and that kind of thing also play a role,” he says.

For a dealer considering whether to carry more installation labor internally, Black believes the same value discussion has to reach the P&L. Employee installers bring payroll taxes, insurance, vehicles, equipment and training costs. Black says retailers also need to weigh the cost of callbacks, claims and margin erosion that can follow poor installation. He does not put a hard number on that tradeoff, but he believes excluding those costs makes the comparison incomplete.

“A strong, skilled workforce is not simply a cost,” Black says. “It’s an appreciating business asset.”

THE JOB GOT EASIER—AND MORE TECHNICAL

At the same time the industry is wrestling with the value of skilled labor, the work itself is changing. Products have become easier to handle and install in some respects, even as the knowledge required of the installer has grown.

Meberg points to the rise of modular products—particularly carpet tile and LVT—as a major change in commercial installation. Mechanics handle fewer heavy rolls, stretch less broadloom and work with products that can be moved and placed in smaller pieces.

“It’s taken a lot of the physicality and also skill out of the trade,” he says. The easier handling does not necessarily make the overall job simpler. He says today’s installer is expected to understand the entire flooring system.

“The installer’s role has become more technical and more system-focused,” he says. “Today’s installer is expected to understand not only the floorcovering itself, but also subfloor preparation, moisture management, adhesives, underlayments, transitions, acclimation and overall jobsite conditions.”

Whitener makes the same distinction from the training side. “I don’t care how easy you make the product to go down,” she says. Installers still have to understand potential moisture issues and conditions beyond the flooring itself.

She uses resilient flooring as an example. Products that look similar can have different locking systems, adhesives, backing constructions and limitations. Existing hardwood, concrete, moisture or another floor already beneath the finished surface can change the installation entirely.

Donjuan sees the consequences when installers continue reaching for techniques or accessories that worked on older products. He believes part of the manufacturer’s job is helping shorten that learning curve.

Mohawk has increasingly pulled outside installers into product development. For one Home Depot project, Donjuan says professional installers were brought to Mohawk’s Dalton facilities and asked to describe recurring field problems. The company recreated those situations, developed prototypes and brought installers back repeatedly to test them.

“We did about five iterations on that 3D printing stuff,” he says. “Fast forward, we have a new product.”

Mohawk has used a similar approach through CFI, including blind evaluations of competing accessory products. Donjuan calls one exercise the “Pepsi Challenge”: installers tested products without seeing the brands and sometimes preferred something different from the product they expected to choose.

“They’re married to a brand, or they’re married to a name,” he says. “You have to walk them through. It takes some time.”

Shaw similarly uses installer feedback in product development. Wright points to work underway on the company’s LifeGuard Blue carpet backing, where field feedback is informing enhancements intended to improve installation.

A mechanic who mastered a category years ago may still need training as products, accessories and system requirements evolve. The hand work may be simpler in places; the judgment surrounding it is not.

INSTALLATION IS BIGGER THAN THE INSTALLER

That expanding technical responsibility also reaches beyond the mechanic putting material on the floor. Many of the decisions that determine whether an installation succeeds are made before the installer ever arrives on the jobsite.

Jobsite readiness, floor prep, moisture, product selection, adhesives and specifications all influence the finished work. By the time the mechanic arrives with tools, some of the conditions determining success may already be in place. That is one reason Gillespie believes the industry needs to think beyond field mechanics when it talks about the installation workforce.

FCICA’s Certified Installation Manager program was designed to give installation managers a grounding in what they need to oversee. At LBJ, Gillespie requires people working in project-management capacities to go through the program, regardless of how long they have been in the business.

“A well-trained installation manager helps a lot of things,” he says. “It provides your client with a more competent person to talk to about what’s going on their project. If there are issues, they can address them.”

Gross sees quality assurance as one of the weakest points on many commercial projects. Specifications may call for particular experience or qualifications, he says, but those requirements are not always verified.

Wright says many field problems Shaw encounters are tied less to the floorcovering than to what happened before installation. “The most common issues we see involve improper floor preparation, moisture management, acclimation, specification selection and overall jobsite readiness,” he says.

Technology has made some of the information surrounding those decisions easier to reach. Gross points to digital plans and takeoffs, technical bulletins and online installation resources that can put product information in the field faster than in years past.

The installation itself remains highly manual. Gross describes the physical work as little changed despite the technology surrounding it, which also helps insulate much of the trade from automation. Meberg does see the potential for certain repetitive tasks to become mechanized. He has watched demonstrations of machines laying tile-format products and can envision simple modular jobs requiring fewer people.

He draws a clear line, however, between repetitive placement and the skilled work around it. “There are so many other things that go along with the trade, from floor preparation to moisture mitigation,” he says. “The more skilled installation levels, like broadloom installations, sheet vinyl installations, resilient installations in clean rooms and very high-tech spaces—these are things that humans are always going to have to do.”

As products and tools change, the value increasingly lies in knowing what the job requires before the finished material ever reaches the floor.

BUILD BEFORE THE WORK COMES BACK

Developing that kind of workforce takes time, which makes the current slowdown deceptive. Soft demand can disguise a labor shortage.

Black believes that is happening now. When flooring volume is lower, dealers may be able to find installers more easily and conclude that the urgency has faded.

He sees the slower period as the time to build. “We can’t wait until demand returns and then start looking for installers,” he says. “We have to develop qualified craftsmen now, because it takes time.”

The industry has seen the consequences of that cycle before. The Great Recession dealt a major blow to the installation workforce as the collapse in flooring demand pushed installers out of the trade, many of whom never returned when business recovered. Roberts sees the same underlying risk today: When business is strong, dealers struggle to find labor and installation calendars stretch. When the market contracts, installers find other ways to make money—and some may not come back.

The next strong market, whenever it arrives, will not instantly produce experienced mechanics, foremen, installation managers or project managers. Those people have to be developed while there is time to teach them.

The industry has made progress creating places where the next installer can discover flooring and begin learning the trade. The harder work begins when that person walks out of the classroom.

Different businesses will continue building that workforce in different ways. What matters most at that moment is whether the new entrant finds a place to keep learning, a way to earn a living while developing and enough opportunity to imagine staying in flooring for a career.

Meberg keeps returning to the same point. “Our client derives no satisfaction from the material purchase until it’s properly installed,” he says. 

A dealer can sell better design, better performance and better flooring. None of it reaches the customer until somebody puts it on the floor.