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Construction Industry Adds
6,000 Jobs in July
ACCORDING TO AN EMPLOYMENT REPORT, released by the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Aug. 4,
the construction industry added 6,000 new positions (seasonally
adjusted) in July.
The increased employment is mild growth for the industry.
Though it marks a three-month job growth streak, July’s gains
trail behind the 16,000 new positions reported in June and the
11,000 reported in May. This pales in comparison to the job
growth seen in the early months of this year, which peaked
with 58,000 new jobs in February, the highest level since
March 2007.
This growth is largely buoyed by residential construction,
which added 7,200 new jobs in July, while the nonresidential
sector (including heavy and civil engineering) dropped
1,700. This dynamic played out throughout several subsets of
construction. Within building construction, residential work
accounted for 5, 100 created jobs and nonresidential 400.
Furthermore, specialty trade contractors saw an overall increase
of 1,200 jobs— 2, 100 jobs created in residential work while 900
were lost in nonresidential.
The report revealed a slight increase in the unemployment rate
from 4. 5 percent in June to 4. 9 percent in July
and a variety of employment information that
has remained largely unchanged throughout
the year, including average weekly hours ( 39. 2),
average hourly pay ($28.90) and the percentage
of women on the job ( 12. 7 percent.)
Overall, the construction industry employed
6.899 million people in July—191,000 positions,
or 2. 8 percent more than July 2016.
—HANNAH FULLMER
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