Open construction jobs fall 40% from year ago

Dive Brief:

• Open construction jobs dropped by 164,000, or about 40%, year over year in October, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday. The number of open jobs dropped by 9,000, or about 3.5%, from September.
• The dip in October followed a drop of 70,000 open jobs from August to September. The BLS report measures the number of open positions for which employers are actively hiring on the last day of the month.
• “While JOLTS data can be volatile from month to month, especially at the industry level, the decline in unfilled construction positions is undeniable over the past few quarters,” Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors, said in a news release. “On average, just 3.4% of industrywide positions were open over the past six months, the lowest rate since 2020.”

Dive Insight:

Numerous factors could have contributed to continued declines in open positions, economists said.

“There’s reason to suspect that election uncertainty, combined with the expectation that borrowing costs will decline over the next several quarters, delayed staffing decisions over the past few months,” Basu said. 

Hiring in October fell to the lowest level since 2020, he said, as contractors simultaneously laid off fewer workers than any month on record. In October, construction employers laid off 97,000 workers, 43% fewer than in the month before and down 42% year over year. Contractors hired 293,000 workers in October, down 12.5% from September and down 23% year over year.

Still, industrywide employment growth has outpaced the broader economy over recent quarters, Basu noted, and according to ABC membership surveys, contractors expect to increase staffing in the next six months, meaning “it appears that construction job openings will rise through the early months of 2025.”

Economists have also largely attributed the open job drops to the residential sector, which has seen a slowdown in recent months. BLS does not differentiate between residential and nonresidential openings.

BLS data suggests nonresidential firms saw a 3.7% increase in employment in October compared to the same month a year ago, according to Macrina Wilkins, senior research analyst for the Associated General Contractors of America. That was nearly three times the gain recorded by residential firms, she said. Also, nonresidential employment has grown at a steady 3.5% to 4% rate during the past two years, as residential employment gradually slows, Wilkins said.

“These trends suggest that the recent decline in job openings is primarily concentrated in the residential construction sector,” Wilkins told Construction Dive.