Unfilled Construction Job Openings Decline -3.5% in February

A deeper look into the Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2021, Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) with a focus on the construction sector, provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), reveals that construction job openings declined -3.5% in February, to 266,000 unfilled positions. A year ago, the unfilled position count was 302,00. In February construction hiring gained traction, with the sector seeing an increase in the hiring rate by 5.4%. The peak rate of hiring occurred in May 2020 (10.3%) as home building and remodeling began to recover from the initial COVID-19 pandemic wave. Inclement weather in the South in February, however, did lead to an increase in construction sector layoffs, which rose to a rate of 3.4%. In comparison, the layoff rate in April 2020, was 10.9%. Except for February 2021, the layoff rate has held below 3.0% since May 2020.