Up to 11,000 jobs were lost in the construction industry last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the decline recorded in nearly all subcategories.
The drop was particularly large in the residential specialty trade sector, seeing a decline of 9,500 jobs since January. Overall residential was off by 7,100 jobs, while the heavy and civil engineering sector saw job losses of around 6,500.
The nonresidential specialty trade contractors sector was also off, in this case by some 1,400 jobs.
The construction figures were announced as the BLS, surveying the national jobs scene in all industries, recorded a larger loss of some 92,000 jobs nationally for February.
That figure particularly stood out given that in January the BLS reported a job gain of roughly 126,000.
The national job loss was particularly significant in the health care industry, which since the Covid 19 pandemic in 2021 has been a primary leader in job growth. In February, jobs in the industry were off by more than 28,000. In reporting the latest figures, the BLS also noted that “over the prior 12 months, health care had added an average of 36,000 jobs per month.”
Jobs in the federal government, generally on the downside since President Trump began his second term in early 2025, were also off by 10,000. The job figures in government, in fact, are now off by a large 330,000 in the last 15 months.
But not every business was caught up in the downward slope: “Employment showed little change over the month in other major industries; including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas construction,” notes the BLS. In this category the agency also lists wholesale and retail trade, as well as financial activities, and the leisure and hospitality fields.
Analysts say that February’s job losses may potentially constitute a blip, rather than a longterm trend. The latest figures, asserts the publication Barron’s, was “largely due to one-time factors such as striking health-care workers, freezing temperatures, and benchmark methodology revisions, all of which cloud the signal about underlying labor conditions.”
Even so, notes the Financial Times: “The bleak data undermines hopes that the US labor market had begun to recover after a sluggish 2025 in which average monthly gains were just 10,000, the weakest level outside a recession in more than two decades.”
In a statement, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the Secretary of Labor, acknowledged that “record-breaking strikes and bad winter weather dragged down February nonfarm employment.”
But she added that the “unemployment rate held steady,” while wage growth has increased by 3.8% since early 2025.
The Labor Secretary remarked also that overall “private sector job growth rose by half a million” in the last 12 months, with “60,000 jobs having been created already this year.”
March 9, 2026
By Garry Boulard
