The construction industry continues to face a skilled labor shortage, with worker scarcity worsening since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Marcum LLP’s annual analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).
The Marcum JOLTS Analysis is produced by Marcum’s National Construction Services group.
Slow Going Post-pandemic
The construction industry has slowly begun to recover jobs lost in the early months of 2020. “In the first two months of the pandemic, construction lost about 1.1 million jobs, a decline equivalent to 14.2% of the industry’s workforce,” said Dr. Anirban Basu, Marcum’s chief construction economist and author of the report. “As of January 2023, the most recently available data as of this writing, there are roughly 7.9 million people on construction payrolls. That’s about 3.6% more employees than the industry had at the start of the pandemic.”
But the rate of recovery has put the industry significantly behind the pre-pandemic pace of employment growth. “That’s approximately 400,000 fewer construction employees than there would have been, based on the 2015 to 2020 pace of hiring, had the pandemic not occurred,” said Dr. Basu.
The residential sector, buoyed by a boom in new home construction, has gained employees at a faster pace than the nonresidential sector over the past two years. “Residential construction accounted for 39.0% of all construction workers at the start of the pandemic,” said Dr. Basu. “As of January 2023, that share had risen to 41.4%.”
Nonresidential construction has recovered jobs at a slower pace due to behavioral changes such as the increased prevalence of remote work and e-commerce. “The nonresidential industry has fared less well, and that’s reflected in the segment’s workforce, which is currently 0.5% smaller than at the start of the pandemic,” said Dr. Basu.
Open Positions Going Unfilled
The pace of hiring would occur at a more rapid pace if not for ongoing…
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