The cost of rebuilding Lahaina on Maui will almost certainly rise above initial estimates, writes Aaron Strong.
About the author: Aaron Strong is an applied microeconomist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation who specializes in environmental and natural resource economics.
Shortages of workers and materials inevitably make rebuilding slower and more expensive after a natural disaster, as we saw in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and Paradise, Calif. In Maui, this is likely to be a problem for agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency that provide public assistance. But it will also be a problem for individual households if private insurance payouts are insufficient to rebuild.
After hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico was able to increase its construction labor force from approximately 20,000 jobs before the storms to more than 36,000 jobs today with little change to wages. It was a different story in the U.S. Virgin Islands, however. There, wages more than doubled as the construction labor force expanded from 1,500 to a peak of more than 5,000. Today there are about 2,000 jobs with wages about 20% higher than prestorm levels.
The port in San Juan also has 15 piers and is much closer to the mainland and other international sources of materials, like South America. By comparison, in Maui, the main port at Kahului has three piers and is considerably smaller.
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