The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) recently released results to a survey conducted as part of Ready to Hire Again: The 2015 Construction Industry Hiring and Business Outlook, which gauges expectations contractors have about the future.
The full report is a deep dive into how contractors expect employment, regulatory burdens, labor shortages, and health care concerns will affect business in the coming year and beyond, but the question that provides a reading of optimism for 2015 is most telling for builders and developers who need extra assurance that 2015 will be as big of a year for housing recovery as is predicted.
The survey was only conducted in 23 states, where there was a large enough sample size for results to be accurately represented. Although it doesn’t provide a full picture of the U.S., the biggest construction markets (Texas, Calif., Fla.), are all accounted for.
Response to the question “When do you expect the construction market to grow again?” piqued our interest, so we’ve heat-mapped the amount of respondents who selected “2015” in the 23 states surveyed. Other response options were “2016,” “2017,” and “2018 or later.” If you scroll over any of the states in our map, you can see the share of contractors who selected a response other than 2015 as well.
Five states most confident in 2015 construction growth:
- Florida: 82%
- Kansas: 80%
- Colorado: 78%
- Georgia: 76%
- Texas: 70%
States with highest shares of “2016” responses:
- Oklahoma: 46%
- Alabama: 34%
- New Jersey: 31%
- California: 30%
- Nebraska: 29%
