Reflecting an ongoing tight construction job market, the industry’s unemployment rate stood at 4.7% in June, according to the most recent figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In a pattern that has been in evidence for most of this year, the unemployment rate ranged from a low of 1.4% in Alaska to a high of 9.9% in Connecticut. Altogether, notes an analysis of the figures by the Associated Builders and Contractors, the industry’s jobless rate as of early summer came in below 10% in all fifty states.
Some of the lowest rates were recorded in the West, with Wyoming showing the second lowest unemployment figures at 1.6%, and Colorado coming in at 2.5%. Arizona and New Mexico, meanwhile, had rates of 5.5% and 6.9% respectively.
The fact that companies are hiring workers at all is seen as something of a miracle to Bernard Markstein, president of Markstein Advisors, which helped to put together the numbers for ABC.
“Energy prices are significantly higher than a year ago, which is having a negative impact on the construction industry,” Markstein said in a press release. The analyst added that “increased insurance premiums, rising labor costs, shortages of skilled labor, and elevated interest rates all continue to be impediments to construction activity.”
Besides Connecticut, two other East coast states had the highest construction unemployment rates: Rhode Island at 8.5% and New Jersey at 8.9%.
The most recent trend figures are short of the 3% jobless rates recorded for most of the post-World War II building boom in the 1950s and 60s but are significantly stronger than the nearly 25% rate recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the worst of the Great Recession.
August 3, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
