Construction Job Openings Hold Steady in August
Stable Conditions for Construction Job Openings
Further analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) August Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) with a look specifically on the construction sector, reveals that overall, the number of open construction jobs held steady in August.
Hiring in the construction sector remained substantial in August, increasing to a rate of 5.1%. The post-virus peak rate of hiring occurred in May 2020 (10.3%) as a rebound took hold in home building and remodeling. Hiring has generally slowed since that time, except for a weather-related rebound in March 2021.
Construction sector layoffs in August were at a 2.1% rate. In April 2020, the layoff rate was 10.9%. Since that time, however, the sector layoff rate has been below 3% — apart from February 2021 due to weather effects.
The job openings rate in construction moved lower to 4.4% in August, with 344,000 open positions in the sector. This is higher than the 250,000 count recorded a year ago.
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