Dive Brief:
- The National Association of Home Builders found that in 2014, more than two million, one-person construction companies were not counted as employers or employees, as reflected in the Census Bureau's latest Nonemployer Statistics report.
- These small firms were in the category of land subdivision (11,000 with an average $158,000 revenue), residential building construction (582,000 with an average $74,000 revenue) and specialty trade contracting (1.7 million with an average $51,000 revenue), although the Census Bureau doesn't break down the specialty trade category into nonresidential or residential.
- The NAHB found that while the number of active "one-man operations" displayed less volatility than their paid-employee counterparts, they recovered more slowly.
Dive Insight:
The NAHB said that the stability and relatively slower rebound exhibited by one-person companies could be the result of individuals forming their own businesses during and immediately following the Great Recession but then later going back to work as employees to fill open positions.
Just last week, in an analysis of the April Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), the NAHB found that unfilled construction industry positions fell to a still-elevated figure of 200,000, down from an upwardly adjusted March number of 215,000, a post-recession high.
Also in a recent Associated General Contractors of America study of BLS data, the organization found that the construction industry experienced a loss of 15,000 jobs in May. In addition, the AGC reported that the BLS revised April's 1,000-job increase to a 5,000-job loss and that the nonresidential sector lost 10,300 positions. Even though May employment was actually 3.4% higher from May 2015, the AGC said the more recent shedding of jobs could indicate that the labor shortages it has been predicting for some time could be "reaching the point where they undermine the sector’s growth."