Here may be the last thing you thought was the reason it’s so hard to attract young adults into the construction trades.

In April, we asked “Why Don’t Young Americans Want to Do Construction Work?” The demographics support the question.

BuildZoom chief economist Issi Romem analyzed American Community Survey Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the construction labor force and highlighted two demographic challenges, the “aging out” of older laborers, and the failure to start among younger people. Romen scopes the second of the two impediments this way:

“There has been a sharp reduction in the industry’s employment of younger workers. The count of employed workers below age 25 fell by 40.1 percent from 2005 to 2015, and by 20.9 and 13.2 percent in the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups. Unlike Baby Boomers’ progression through the lifecycle, the failure to maintain sufficiently-sized young replacement cohorts is not an economy-wide phenomenon, but is specific to the construction industry. The industry’s shedding of younger workers took place mostly during the downturn between 2005 and 2010, and it has failed to significantly regrow those ranks since. Young workers appear to shun the construction industry.”

Author Tyler Cowen looks from a 40,000-foot view and sees “a populace that has that has drawn inward rather than finding and facing new challenges.” Hence, the title of his latest book, “The Complacent Class, The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.”

National Association of Home Builders economist Rose Quint noted earlier this year that, among the three-out-of-four young adults who have a chosen career field, only 3% of them are interested in the construction trades. For the one in four who are undecided about their career, well over half (63%) say they have no interested in becoming a construction worker at virtually any pay level, essentially because they’re daunted by how hard the work is.

Now, here’s another view, closer to that of Cowen’s “complacency theory,” as to what may be in the way of emerging young adults and the skilled construction trades that could provide many of them a decent, fulfilling livelihood: video games.

You read that right.

Academics from Princeton University, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester say there’s ample evidence that since 2000, men who would otherwise be working are instead being drawn into immersive virtual worlds, giving up paychecks in the process.

What’s more, these men are reporting higher levels of happiness compared with those who work, and they’re drawing on the support of mom and dad to stay there. The paper warns these men’s absence from the labor force is likely to negatively affect their employment and earnings prospects for the rest of their lives.

Addicted to not working hard? One can relate, in a way, but then you move on and do what you’ve got to do to make your way in life, no?