Const. Unemployment Rate at 9.4% in Jan.

Feb. 9, 2021

Construction employment stagnated in January, ending eight months of recovery from the pandemic-related losses of early 2020, according to AGC. Construction employment dipped by 3,000 to 7,392,000 in January from a downwardly revised December total. Employment in the sector remains 256,000 or 3.3 percent lower than in February 2020.

Association officials added that new measures being considered in Congress, including the PRO Act and the National Apprenticeship Act, threaten to undermine the sector’s recovery by disrupting ongoing projects and hampering employers’ ability to train workers.

Nonresidential construction has had a much weaker recovery than homebuilding and home improvement construction. While both parts of the industry had huge job losses in early 2020 from the pre-pandemic peak in February to April, residential building and specialty trade contractors have now recouped all of the employment losses they incurred. Nonresidential construction employment was 259,000 or 5.5 percent lower in January than in February 2020. Only 60 percent of the job losses in nonresidential construction had been erased as of last month.

Unemployment in construction soared over the past 12 months. The industry’s unemployment rate in January was 9.4 percent, compared to 5.4 percent in January 2020. A total of 938,000 former construction workers were unemployed, up from 515,000 a year earlier. Both figures were the highest for January since 2015.

Association officials warned that the newly-introduced PRO Act would hurt construction workers and demand for future projects by unleashing a new wave of labor unrest that could put a halt to many types of construction projects, even those that are not directly involved in a labor dispute with a union.