construction industry pandemic job losses pale compared to other industries, says new report

Job losses as a result of the pandemic economic shutdown have been overwhelmingly confined to the nation’s service industries, according to a new report released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The report, Latest Job Market Data Shows the Uneven Impacts of a K-Shaped Recovery on US Industries, reveals that in terms of the number of jobs lost this year, just 3.7% were in the construction industry.

That number compares favorably with the 10.8% lost in the goods-producing industry, 11.9% in the trade, transportation, and utilities sector, and a gigantic 35.8% within the leisure and hospitality industry.

Increasingly, economists are looking at the late 2020 recovery as one that it K-shaped, in the sense that some industries, on the top part of the K, are doing better, while those on the bottom part of the K continue to struggle.

According to Curtis Dubay, a senior economist with the Chamber, goods-producing industries have overall lost “about 6% of their workforce since February, mining and logging is down almost 14%.”

Much deeper job losses have seen in the motion picture and sound recording industry, which is now down by a massive 50%, the performing arts and spectator sports sector, off by 46%, and the scenic sightseeing transportation field, with a 43% job loss.

Within the construction industry, the job losses have been the greatest, at 8.1%, in the heavy and civil engineering sector; followed by nonresidential specialty trade contractors, with a 7.1% decline; and the nonresidential building sector at 6.7%.

Construction job losses were the most minimal in the residential specialty trade contractors sector at 3.1%; and residential building, at 2.5%.

Dubay posits that the ongoing presence of the K-shaped recovery is going to require Congress to “craft a targeted relief package in its phase four bill.”
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That legislation, continued Dubay, “will need to aid those industries at the bottom of the K, because these industries are likely to lag behind as long as the pandemic persists.”

​By Garry Boulard

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