Poll results: Speaking of language

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanics are overrepresented in the construction industry. In 2020, 30 percent of construction workers were hispanic — that’s considerably higher than that group’s 17.6 percent share of total employed in the same year.

The demographics of the job site are, of course, leading to linguistic adjustments at hardware and building supply companies. One example is that of California-based Foundation Building Materials, which recently launched MyFBM in Spanish. The move makes “our platform more accessible and user-friendly for the growing number of Spanish-speaking professionals in the construction industry.”