Dive Brief:
- The number of open construction jobs increased by 26% at the end of July when compared to the month before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- On the last day of the month, 306,000 construction jobs went unfilled, which was 33.6% higher than July of 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Quits dropped by 52% month over month, a nine-year high, according to Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors.
- The numbers underscore the dire market and challenging time contractors have finding workers, experts say, as immigration crackdowns exacerbate the labor shortage.
Dive Insight:
The July jobs opening level was the highest in over a year, said Basu.
“Given the ongoing decline in nonresidential construction spending, however, that increase is likely attributable to immigration policy and its effects on the industry’s labor force rather than any increases in the demand for construction workers,” Basu said.
The exact impact can be hard to measure, though, as foreign-born, unauthorized workers can be harder to track in the data.
As quits peaked, layoffs were the highest since the beginning of 2023, Basu said. That indicates a tight job market where workers seek job security and suggests “an alarming deterioration in industrywide labor demand,” according to Basu.
Macrina Wilkins, senior research analyst at the Associated General Contractors of America, pointed to the continued imbalance of demand versus supply in the labor market.
“This tension underscores how difficult it remains for firms to bring on qualified workers, even as demand persists,” Wilkens said of the higher layoffs and reduced quits.
The data aligns with a recent survey from AGC and NCCER, where 92% of respondents reported challenges filling positions and nearly half reported project delays tied to worker shortages.
“That said, firms may list openings without immediately filling them if projects have not yet received the go-ahead, which helps explain the gap between rising job postings and stagnant hiring,” Wilkins said.
Indeed, the data can be used as a tool, but Basu acknowledged that it “can be volatile from month to month.” That topic garnered national headlines last month, when President Donald Trump bemoaned a jobs report that contained revised data from previous months. As a result of the report, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
Nonetheless, economists cautioned that editing previous numbers is a normal practice as more information comes in and paints a broader picture of economic conditions.
