home construction employment posts latest gain

Continuing a trend that was first recorded towards the second half of the Great Recession in the fall of 2011, residential construction employment has posted another monthly increase.

According to numbers compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall construction jobs increased by 12,900 in August.

And that jump followed a 6,800-job increase from July.

Conversely, the unemployment rate for construction workers dropped to 4.0 percent last month, down from 4.4 in July.

As documented in the BLS’ Employment Situation—August 2018 report, there are currently more than 2 million residential specialty trade jobs nationally, an increase of 6 percent since 2011.

Combining residential construction jobs with the residential specialty trade jobs, there are now more than 2.8 million jobs as of August in the industry.

Since the beginning of this year, the residential construction industry has seen a jump in jobs on average of just under 5,400 a month.

From the low point of 20ll, just under 852,000 residential construction jobs have been added.

In a statement on the new numbers, William Wiatrowski, BLS acting commissioner, noted that for the entire construction industry employment “continued to trend up in August (+23,000) and has increased by 297,000 over the year.”

By Garry Boulard

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