Construction Employment Declines in Several States

In several different states around the country, construction employment continued to decline. Nearly half of the states managed to see a bit of an increase with available positions in the construction sector. However, a little over half of the states in America were stuck dealing with some declines. The information about the decreases and increase came directly from the Labor Department’s information for the Associated General Contractors of America. The information provided shows that the recovery process for the construction industry is definitely quite fragile. A chief economist for the association, Ken Simonson, says that improvements were not very steady, which has caused a lot of pessimism.

Simonson pointed out that there were about 25 different states that managed to add construction positions within the span of June 2011 throughout June of 2012. However, he also says that construction jobs declined in about 25 of the states as well. D.C. managed to see the large increase of construction jobs available throughout the span of the year. There were several other states that managed to add construction jobs, including North Dakota, Montana, Texas, Arizona and California. In the meantime, there were states that lost construction jobs over the year, including Alaska, Mississippi and Wisconsin. The state that lost the most jobs within the construction sector was Florida, losing a total of 7.4 percent of the construction jobs available in the state.

There was even worse news because only a total of 18 states managed to add any sort of construction job between the span of one month, from May to June. In the meantime, about 27 states dealt with losses of construction jobs within the same time frame and nearly five states kept a steady pace with the amount of construction jobs they had available. It is believed that construction employment is going to continue to be sluggish until some changes are made, especially if federal officials and the state officials do not put out investments that go towards construction projects.  The investments are needed for the construction projects to actually take place.

With less funding available, certain construction projects simply cannot take place and therefore, construction workers end up unable to find work as construction jobs end up being cut since there is not enough work to go around. These budget cuts are definitely causing a huge concern for the construction sector and economists feel that these cuts should not necessarily be made, especially during a period in time when the construction sector needs to improve because it is sluggish.