home building construction jobs post big gain, says new report

In a significant trend, the Department of Labor is reporting that residential construction jobs were up by 83,200 in June.

That increase follows on an even more dramatic jump in May, which saw the creation of more than 224,200 new home building jobs.

According to a statement released by the National Association of Home Builders, residential construction employment now stands nationally at 2.8 million: “Broken down as 795,000 builders and 2.0 million residential specialty trade contractors.”

But because of the large decline in home building jobs during the month directly after the COVID-19 outbreak, the six-month average residential construction employment remains down by nearly 18,000.

Crunching the numbers for the entire last full year, just under 84,000 jobs in the home building and remodeling industries have been lost.

Overall, the unemployment rate for both residential builders as well as residential specialty trade contractors saw a decrease of nearly 3 percent in the last month to the current 12.0 percent.

In May, that rate stood at 15.2 percent.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the last time the home building sector saw double-digit unemployment was during the depths of the Great Recession in 2011, when the rate stood at more than 20 percent.

In an analysis of the new numbers by King Fu, director of forecasting and analysis for the NAHB, it was additionally noted that the “improving job situation is also a cause behind recent relative strength in housing demand.”
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That demand has fueled a 17 percent late spring rise in home sales.

​By Garry Boulard

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