Toledo area motorists are feeling the frustration of seeing barricades and orange barrels everywhere they go of late.

But they might feel better knowing their inconvenience stems from a boom in area construction — in highway work, commercial and industrial work, and residential work. The projects are putting thousands of skilled and unskilled labor to work, fueling the tax base, and stimulating the local economy with an influx of good-paying wages and huge number of man-hours worked.

“It’s going nuts,” said Kevin Smith, executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of Northwest Ohio.

Since 2012, the Toledo area construction industry has had a 10 percent increase in the total number of hours all the area workers have put on the job. “And this year, it’s just going through the roof,” Mr. Smith said.

By the local contractors’ estimate, construction employment is up 40 percent from last year for the first five months of the year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows such employment is up 13 percent for the period, but Mr. Smith said the government data are estimates that are usually extremely conservative.

Either way, the increase in jobs is significant from the beginning of 2015, which itself was a pretty decent year. Figures from the labor statistics bureau show that metro Toledo in 2010 had 10,500 construction workers, in 2015 it had 12,900 and through five months of this year has 13,200.

Throughout the nine-county region covered by the Northwest Ohio Building Trades, there are 15,000 union workers and nearly all of them are working, said Shaun Enright, the trades’ business manager.

About 8,000 of them are involved in road work projects, but the bounty of work extends to all sectors, he said.

“It’s big all across the board,” Mr. Enright said. In the industrial sector, a project at the BP Toledo refinery in Oregon will have 2.5 million man-hours in 80 days and the Oregon Clean Energy power plant is using about 2,500 workers, he said.

Plus, there are various ProMedica projects, for its new headquarters in downtown Toledo and for its expansion at ProMedica Toledo Hospital, he added.

In addition, Mercy Health is building a new urgent care center and a new emergency room at its St. Vincent Medical Center, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is soon to be retooling its Toledo Assembly Complex, a new factory was recently completed for use by Dana Holding Corp. at the Overland Industrial Park in Toledo, and multiple apartment complexes are under construction.

“All that alone is a lot, and then we have the continuing road work and bridge work,” Mr. Enright said. “You name it, we’re doing it.”

Brian Wingate, a carpenter and also a supervisor for commercial contractor Rudolph/​Libbe Inc., said of local construction workers: “If you want to work, you can work. There’s no two ways about it.”

The construction situation has become almost too good. About six months ago, the area building trades set up a website, greatworkgreatlife.com, touting northwest Ohio and encouraging union construction workers throughout the United States to come to the region because projects are plentiful and so are the jobs.

“It says, ‘If work’s slow where you’re at, come here. There’s work,’” Mr. Enright said.

Construction, in general, provides good-paying jobs.

Heavy-industry journeymen specialists, such as boilermakers, steamfitters and pipefitters, and electricians can receive up to $35 an hour, plus benefits. Crane operators and laborers are paid $19 to $30 an hour, depending on their skills.

Pension-wise, construction workers build up pension credits only when they work, so with plenty of projects in need of workers, many have answered the call, local construction industry officials say.

But many more are needed. “They’re projecting here that, in October, we’re not going to have enough guys to man all the work,” Mr. Wingate said.

June Remley, a spokesman for Rudolph/​Libbe, one the region’s largest contractors, said the company isn’t turning down work. 

But with so many projects going and new opportunities coming up frequently, the contractor has found it needs to be somewhat selective about pursuing some opportunities. “We now need to be certain it’s the best fit for our work force,” she said.

Meanwhile the clients, perhaps recognizing that there is competition for project managers and workers, are doing fewer traditional bidding processes for their projects and instead are going directly to a contractor to negotiate a contract, Ms. Remley said.

Of late, Rudolph/​Libbe has been involved in no fewer than 16 projects, Ms. Remley said, including work for ProMedica and Mercy. 

The contractor has done a lot of new hiring, has taken on 30 interns this summer and to fill out work crews, and has asked some construction retirees to come back and work on projects, she explained.

Todd Michaelsen, manager of the local chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association, said he has been impressed by the strength of the construction boom across all sectors.

“It really is unusual to have multiple sectors going strong at one time,” Mr. Michaelsen said. “... Overall, all the segments are doing well right now and I think we’ll have some fairly good employment for a fairly good long time.”

His association is a group of electrical subcontractors who hire electricians to handle projects. Mr. Michaelsen said group members are on budget to do 3 million man-hours this year, and may exceed that. Last year, they did 2.4 million, he said.

“My guys [electricians] are at 100 percent employment now, and you’re talking about 1,500 people,” Mr. Michaelsen said.

Despite the heavy workload, his members are glad to see the work, given what had been a long dry spell, he said.

Industry experts predict the metro Toledo construction boom could last three years at least.

That has many excited, but it has Associated General Contractors’ Mr. Smith worried.

“The prospect we’re facing now is where will we find people?” Mr. Smith said. “There are plenty of openings but no great rush on the part of young people to join the building trades’ ranks.”

Last year, the contractors group started a construction boot camp with Toledo Public Schools. 

The boot camp took students interested in construction to various work sites to show them job options.

“The neat thing in this is we need the people, and if we have a downtown expansion, we currently have many people in their 50s who are ready to retire after this boom,” Mr. Smith said. “So next time around, apprentices aren’t likely to get laid off when things wind down,” he said.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published July 24, 2016, 4:00 a.m.