AGC: Construction Employment Stalls in January

“The stagnation in construction employment in January may foreshadow further deterioration in the industry as projects that had started before the pandemic finish up and owners hold off on awarding new work,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. “With so much of the economy still shut down or operating at reduced levels, it will likely be a long time before many nonresidential contractors are ready to hire again.”

Nonresidential construction, the more steel intensive side of construction, has been much slower to recover than home building and remodeling. Residential building and specialty trade contractors have recouped the job losses incurred during the pandemic from February to April, said Simonson, however, only 60 percent of nonresidential job losses have been erased.

AGC stated that new measures being considered in Congress, including the PRO Act and the National Apprenticeship Act, threaten to undermine the sector’s recovery. The PRO Act will change worker classifications and the way in which unions and employers collectively bargain. The National Apprentice Act, although intended to expand apprenticeships and invest in workforce training, would deny federal funding to apprenticeship programs not operated with unions and “undermine the ability of many firms across the country to train and prepare workers,” said AGC.

“Instead of finding ways to build back better, these new congressional proposals would leave many workers unpaid and untrained while projects languish, unfinished,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer. “It is hard to see how cutting funding to training programs, undermining workers, and crippling the economy will help put more people back to work in construction or other fields.”