Three major construction industry subcategories saw employment increases in June, according to the most recent numbers issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, representing a now nearly 3% increase over where things stood a year ago.
Altogether, the BLS notes that industry employment is up by a healthy 235,000 new jobs since June of 2023, with the greatest growth seen in the nonresidential category with 177,700 new jobs.
The latest figures, said Anirban Basu, chief economist with the Associated Builders and Contractors, mean one thing for certain: “Despite indications that the broader economy is slowing, the construction industry continued to add jobs at a rapid pace in June.”
In a statement, Basu added that most likely the nation’s builders would have reported even stronger numbers, “if not for ongoing labor shortages.”
Nonresidential specialty contractors saw an 3.4% in the last year, representing 92,600 new jobs; with heavy and civil engineering jobs up by 3.6%, or 39,700 new jobs.
The numbers were slightly less, but still on the upside, among residential specialty trade contractors with a 1.5% increase, representing 34,700 new jobs.
In the larger economy, more than 206,000 new jobs were added in June, with the largest increases coming in the public sector at around 70,000; and the nation’s healthcare industry, reporting 48,600 new positions.
Those 206,000 new jobs, said Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, means that the “prime age labor participation rate hit a 22-year high, and the unemployment rate remains low at 4.1%.”
Appearing in the publication Forbes, Eli Amdur, economics columnist, took issue with the notion that the latest job figures, while still on the upside, represent an economy that is cooling down.
In the context of what people are actually earning, said Amdur, “the current rate of wage increase, 3.9%, once again significantly outpaces inflation, which is at 3.2%. Every industrialized nation on earth would trade their numbers for ours if they could.”
For all of that, The Hill newspaper, in looking at those same numbers, remarked: “Wage growth has generally been declining since it hit 5.9% in March 2022.”
By Garry Boulard
Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash
