Marcum LLP, an accounting and advisory firm, released its annual analysis of construction employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Turnover Survey (JOLTS). The analysis finds that construction job openings declined towards the end of 2019, but remain at historically high levels.
Job openings across all industries are down on a year-over-year basis for the first time since 2009, but the number of open positions remains higher than the number of unemployed Americans.
The number of available jobs in construction fell from 299,000 in January 2019 to 239,000 at the end of the calendar year. Much of the decline in demand for workers in the construction industry is attributable to nonresidential construction segments, according to the Marcum report. Construction was one of only four segments to sustain a decline of more than 20% in the number of job openings. The number of job openings is falling faster in the industry than in the broader economy. Marcum said one possibility is that job openings have slipped in the industry because employers have given up looking for qualified workers after facing difficulty filling positions.
Construction net hires—the difference between the number of people hired and the number of people laid off—has remained low, Marcum reports, an indication of a tight labor market in which firms are competing against one another as well as with other employers from other industries for scarce talent.
