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Dive Brief:
- Open construction jobs fell 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 fell by 9,000, or about 3.5%, from September.
- October’s decline followed a drop of 70,000 job openings 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, particularly at the industry level, the decrease in unoccupied construction positions is undeniable over the past few quarters,” said Anirban Basu, chief economist at Associated Builders and Contractors, in a press release. “On average, only 3.4% of positions across the industry were open during the last six months, the lowest rate since 2020.”
Diving knowledge:
Numerous factors could have contributed to the continued decline in open positions, economists said.
“There is reason to suspect that election uncertainty, combined with the expectation that borrowing costs will decline in the coming quarters, delayed personnel 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% less than the previous month and 42% less than a year earlier. Contractors hired 293,000 workers in October, down 12.5% from September and down 23% from a year earlier.
Still, industry-wide job growth has outpaced the broader economy in recent quarters, Basu noted, and according to ABC member surveys, contractors expect to increase headcount over the next six months, meaning that “construction job openings look set to increase in the first few months of 2025.”
Economists have also largely attributed the drop in job openings to the residential sector, which has seen a slowdown in recent months. BLS does not differentiate between residential and non-residential openings.
BLS data suggests that nonresidential businesses experienced a 3.7% increase in employment in October compared to the same month a year ago, according to Macrina Wilkins, senior research analyst at Associated General Contractors of America. That was almost three times the gain recorded by residential companies, he said. Also, non-residential employment has grown at a steady 3.5% to 4% rate over 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.
