Plumbers are a market failure

The shower is dripping again.

I phone our fifth plumber (all the rest have been struck off for incompetence or a refusal to attend - this one actually came the last time). He texts back airily, 'Busy right now, maybe three weeks time?'

I am wise to the language of plumbers. He means he has a lucrative long-term contract and cannot foresee a time when our little piece of work could make economic sense to him, or be scheduled.

Given the new houses being built in our neighbourhood, this makes complete sense.

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I am dissatisfied with plumbing as a service, in a way I am not with retailing.  

Waitrose. Why can't plumbing be like Waitrose?

We tried a national organisation once. They advertised that they'd find a plumber for you. In so many hours, at such-and-such an inflated cost. I called them. Then I cancelled within the hour after reading - belatedly - their terrible reviews. They were cowboys and charlatans.

Most plumbers are small businesses. Family and friends. The job does not lend itself to economies of scale: each house and job is different, with little standardisation. This means that there is no value-adding role for a Waitrose-type organisation of plumbers.

The cowboy outfit I called was just an Internet middleman. But they sign up primarily incompetent plumbers because the margins their plumbers see are worse.

The supply of plumbers is inelastic.

The steady-state number of plumbers in an area is set by periods of weak demand, usually during a recession. When times are better, the good plumbers are always busy on the best contracts; the long-term ones sourced from house-builders.

The little family-house problem gets short shrift.

If supply of plumbing services is structurally inadequate, then what about demand? Deskilling the task would help: better quality piping and joints, designed for less, and easier, maintenance.

But housebuilders have no incentive. New-house plumbing works just fine for the first few years. The builders have been paid and are long-gone when the problems start.

With local supply restricted and local demand hard to decrease, the mismatch looks here to stay. Only labour mobility can solve this problem.

Market equilibrium demands we say yes to the Polish plumber!

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This is not an argument against Brexit. It's an argument in favour of access to competent, skilled workers.