Businesses are desperate for the work but they're getting spread thin. "I'd love to be charging more but we simply can't," Dempsey says. "People are reducing their prices so they can stay afloat during these incredibly challenging times. However, I'm not able to pay my staff more, even though their costs are going up." New Zealand Certified Builders (NZCB) says while we've had building booms and skilled trade shortages before, we've never had such extremes at the same time. "It's just taken a while to flow through, and it's been exacerbated by the incredibly high volume within the industry currently. So we've just got a perfect storm," NZCB chief executive Grant Florence says.