A 26-floor building is under construction off Central Avenue and Fillmore Street in downtown Phoenix on April 14, 2025. (Photo by Cheyla Daverman/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX – Eating only a banana for breakfast, Francisco Gomez, 28, starts his five- to six-day workweek at 5 a.m.
“Work can be pretty stressful,” Gomez said. “There’s just so much pressure, you feel like things are your fault and you feel like you can’t do nothing about it.”
Gomez, a father of two, has worked in construction for about five years as a fire stopper, filling gaps between rooms and spraying fire retardants to help prevent fires.
“If the building were to catch on fire, it pretty much gives the people about two to three hours to escape the building before the metal starts melting,” he said.
Gomez, like other construction workers typically clock 40 to 45 hours a week. His bosses at Alpha Insulation & Waterproofing check in with him and his co-workers about their physical health and mental well-being.
“They don’t have counselors but they try to counsel. They try to get us to come up and express ourselves,” Gomez said. “It’s kind of hard because a lot of people don’t want to speak up. I don’t know if it’s embarrassment or what.”
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that analyzed suicide rates across various industries and occupations found certain occupations, such as construction, have higher rates.
“Both classification systems have different meanings,” said Aaron Sussell, a CDC epidemiologist and lead author of the study. He said that in the study, each company or organization is classified into industry groups based on what they do.
Sussell explained that industry is a broader term and includes people who are not doing the “active work out in the field building and fixing things,” unlike the occupation of “Construction and extraction,” which has many subgroups such as carpenters, electricians, stonemasons and miners.