Construction spending in the manufacturing sector saw a massive increase in the 12 months, according to new U.S. Census Bureau figures, vastly outdistancing expenditures in all other sectors.
Just released figures shows an unprecedentedly large 76% gain in the manufacturing sector from May of 2022 to this most recent May. No other sector comes close to that gain, with only the nonresidential, highway and street, and healthcare sectors showing double-digit increases below the 20% mark.
Smaller gains were charted in the healthcare sector, with a 12% increase in spending over the spring of last year; the transportation sector, up by 9%, and education sector spending, showing a 7% gain.
Only one sector registered a decline: private residential: off by 12% from May of 2022.
The new numbers also show an increase in overall construction employment, with residential work seeing a 1.6% increase over the early summer of 2022; while nonresidential jobs were up by 3.2%.
Overall, total construction employment in the last year stood at just 7.9 million, for a gain of 23,000 over May, and nearly 280,000 compared with May of 2022.
While employment in construction is clearly on the upside almost everywhere, so are, conversely, the number of open jobs. According to a survey put together by the Associated General Contractors of America there were “396,000 job openings in construction, not seasonally adjusted, at the end of May.”
That figure marked the second-highest total for the month of May in the 23-year history of the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey.
Looking at all jobs in all industries, employment growth was up by some 209,000 last month, a drop from the 306,000 recorded in May. Those numbers, according to the New York Times, represent a “continued cooling of the labor market,” standing in stark comparison to the more than 500,000 new jobs created in the month of July 2022.
Looking at the numbers from another direction, the Financial Times noted that the “unemployment rate remained near a multi-decade low,” falling to 3.6%. “Wage growth,” the publication added, “was also stronger than expected at 4.4% on a year-on-year basis.”
In a statement upon release of the new BLS statistics, President Biden noted an overall gain since January of 2021 of 13.2 million new jobs. “That’s more jobs added in two and a half years than any president has ever created in a four-year term,” he remarked.
By Garry Boulard
