Dive Brief:

• It's unusual to find data as contradictory as the private sector and public sector reports on U.S. construction jobs in December.
• According to Associated General Contractors' monthly analysis of the government's information, the industry lost 16,000 jobs last month across all sectors, while payroll processor ADP had said two days earlier that there were 48,000 more jobs.
• Some of the variance probably is explained by ADP's gathering information only from the private sector while the government covers the whole industry, but it's still a heck of a difference.

Dive Insight:

AGC said weather likely played some part in the lower numbers, but it could not account for the total loss, the group said. What a breakdown of the numbers show, AGC Chief Economist Ken Simonson said, was that the recovery is uneven and incomplete. Residential construction is up, the public sector is is down, and private nonresidential is inconsistent.