Construction Sector Employment Changed Little in June

A closer look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for June, with a focus on the construction sector employment and additional analysis provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) (8-1-23), reveals that the construction labor market experienced little change in the number of job openings in June.

The count of open construction jobs declined to 374,000. This data comes after a series high of 488,000 reported in December 2022. The construction sector job openings rate also declined to 4.5%. The NAHB says these estimates point to the labor market having peaked in 2022 and now entering a stop-start cooling stage.

Hiring in the construction sector slowed to 4.3% in June after posting a reading of 4.5% in May. The post COVID-19 peak rate of hiring occurred in May 2020 (10.4%) as a surge in home building and remodeling began.

Construction sector layoffs increased to a rate of 1.8% in June. The peak percentage of layoffs was 10.8% in April 2020. Since that time, the layoff rate has been below 3%, with the exception of February 2021 due to weather related issues and March due to some market agitation.