The good news: The number of construction job openings climbed to 221,000 in September, a 15% gain compared to upward-revised 192,000 this August, according to the JOLTS release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday morning. The bad: There’s a shortage of labor. Year-over-year, September’s figure more than doubles the 104,000 openings extant in September 2015. September’s construction opening rate stood at 3.2%, up from August’s 2.8%.
Construction hiring cooled off a bit from a three-month growth streak, but still added 310,000 this September, down -8% month-over-month and down 4.3% year-over-year. The rate of hiring stood at 4.6% for September, down from 5.1% this past August. Hires have shown signs of picking up entering the second half of this year, but still haven’t yet reached the post-recession high seen in December 2014.
The rate of total separations–including quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations–closed the month with a seasonally adjusted 4.4%, down from August’s 4.9%. Construction separations once reached a high point of 7.3% in March 2010, when the business was most hurt by the crisis, but have been trending down gradually.
After narrowing for several months, the gap between total construction hires and total separations stayed unchanged in September, suggesting a solid outlook for future employment growth. In this month, about 19,000 people were added to the construction workforce.
Read the full release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics here >>
More coverage of the BLS JOLTS report from BUILDER >>
