Construction’s unemployment rate continues to rise, reaching 27.1% in February, its highest level in a decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In its latest monthly employment report, released on March 5, BLS says that construction’s jobless rate last month was up from 24.7% in January and also represented an increase from the February 2009 mark of 21.4%. BLS reports that construction shed another 64,000 jobs in February, bringing the industry’s total job losses since December 2007 to 1.9 million. The BLS construction jobless rate isn’t adjusted for seasonal variations. In the highly seasonal construction industry, February tends to
The signs were all there. The project manager’s attention level was down. Tasks that he would typically complete in one day took a week. Mistakes cut the value of the plans he prepared. He no longer followed up with key people on the team. In the end, he lost interest in both the project management and technical aspects of his job, so his managers called him in for a talk that led to a parting of ways. “He told us he was glad to be fired, because the pressures of the job had become too much,” says a former manager.
Construction's unemployment rate continues to rise, reaching a grim 27.1% in February, its highest level in a decade, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. In its latest monthly employment report, released on March 5, BLS says that construction's jobless rate last month was up from 24.7% in January and also represented an increase from the February 2009 mark of 21.4%. BLS reports that construction shed another 64,000 jobs in February, bringing the industry's total job losses since December 2007 to 1.9 million. The BLS construction jobless rate isn't adjusted for seasonal variations. In the highly seasonal construction industry, even
The fragmented construction business has too many subgroups, many say, but one now forming could be an industry wake-up call. The Construction Millennials of America, a small group of under-30 professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area who banded together in 2008 to network and share workplace stories, now hopes to expand and start influencing company strategy sooner rather than later. Photo: Jill Brown (Left); Jennifter Gross (Center); Doug Durbin (Right) Engineers Brown (left), Gross (center) and Durbin hope their new networking group for “under 30s” in construction will boost young employees’ career and company leadership skills. “Because of the
Construction’s unemployment rate soared to 25% in January, up from 18% the previous year, 11% in 2008 and 9% in 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate represents more than 2.19 million construction workers who have been laid off. On the flip side of the coin, the construction industry employed 5.63 million workers in January, down from 6.55 million during the same month a year ago and 7.47 million in 2008. In January, the residential construction market employed 561,000 workers, down 17% from a year ago and down 42% from 2006’s peak employment. Source: U.S.
With its membership in recession mode, the Associated Builders and Contractors drew only about 1,100 attendees to its 60th anniversary convention in San Diego earlier this month. But many of them packed a last-day, early-morning session to hear claims the open-shop trade group was managing to stave off new pro-labor moves by the Obama Administration and push supportive candidates in this year’s congressional elections. The session was closed to nonmembers, but ABC legal counsel Maury Baskin, a Baltimore-based attorney, told ENR that, despite organized labor’s ramped-up attacks on open-shop construction, “the surprise is that we’ve held our own after the
Construction's unemployment rate continues to rise, reaching 24.7% in January, its highest level since 2000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. BLS's latest monthly employment report, released on Feb. 5, shows that contruction's January jobless rate increased from 22.7% in December and 18.2% in January 2009. Construction lost 75,000 jobs in January, bringing total jobs lost since December 2007 to 1.9 million. Construction's 24.7% rate is the industry's highest since 2000, when BLS changed its system for classifying industries. The previous high was December's 22.7%. Under BLS's pre-2000 classification method, construction's highest jobless rate since 1948 came in February
Construction’s jobless rate climbed to its highest level in at least a decade, reaching 22.7% in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. Economists say the slump in nonresidential building markets has overshadowed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s boost to the public-works sector. The latest BLS monthly figures, released on Jan. 8, show construction’s December unemployment rose from November’s 19.4% and also stood well above the December 2008 level of 15.3%. + Image Source: U.S. Dept. of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Note: Rates are not seasonally adjusted. The 22.7% rate is the industry’s highest since 2000, when
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has produced or saved an estimated 262,000 construction-sector jobs through the end of 2009, the White House Council of Economic Advisers says in its latest update on the impact of the stimulus legislation. That total represents a near doubling from the 133,000 construction jobs CEA estimated in its previous ARRA study, issued Sept. 10. In its new report, released Jan. 13, CEA says that over all, ARRA hasincreased employment by 1.5 million to 2 million as of the fourth quarter of 2009, compared with what the jobs level would have been if the legislation
In a clear sign of construction's persistently severe problems, the industry's jobless rate hit its highest level in at least a decade, climbing to 22.7% in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. The latest BLS monthly employment figures, released Jan. 8, show that construction's December jobless rate rose from November's 19.4%, and also was well above the December 2008 mark of 15.3%. Moreover, construction's 22.7% rate is the industry's highest since 2000, when BLS changed its system for classifying and defining industries, a bureau spokesperson says. Construction's previous post-2000 high came in February 2009, when the industry's jobless
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