Category: Hiring Trends
By Sharon O’Malley |
Construction employers added 45,000 jobs in April, helping to fuel nationwide employment growth and push the country’s unemployment to its lowest level since May 2008.
April was the best month for construction employment since January 2014,U.S. Labor Department figures showed on Friday—and not just for job creation. Unemployment among construction workers fell to its lowest level since 2006.
The news was better than expected after the industry lost 9,000 jobs in March.
The construction industry added more jobs in April than any other industries except professional/business services and healthcare.
Bloomberg called the construction numbers “one clear bright spot.” Associated Builders and Contractors Chief Economist Anirban Basu called the report “a relief” and said the unemployment data “strongly suggested that employers viewed the recent bout of economic weakness as temporary.”
Nonresidential building
The soft spot in the otherwise buoyant report was nonresidential building, which lost 7,800 jobs last month, even as other construction sectors gained positions.
Still, job creation in non-residential building construction increased by 16,600, or 2.4%, since April 2014. And Robert Murray, chief economist for Dodge Data & Analytics, said he foresees a “favorable” future for nonresidential building jobs, based on healthy increases in commercial and institutional building starts in 2014.
Specialty trade contractors in the non-residential sector had a good month, however, adding 20,200 jobs for skilled carpenters, plumbers, electricians and others in April. In fact, the industry has added jobs for 76,400 nonresidential trades since April 2014.
Heavy and civil construction employers also came out ahead for the month, adding 8,400 jobs and putting employment in that sector up by 33,100 positions since this time last year.
Residential building
The residential sector added 2,800 jobs between March and April and 41,200 over the past year. That gain reflects an ongoing need in the homebuilding sector for employees—and the ongoing struggle both homebuilders and commercial contractors have had finding qualified workers.
Sales of existing homes were up in March, which most have said is a good sign for the coming months. An increasing number of signed contracts, of course, will spur additional employment in the construction sector as builders staff up to meet the projected demand for new homes.
“The housing numbers in this report are checking off all the boxes,” Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research in New York, toldBloomberg. “None of these things would be happening if the housing market weren’t picking up.”
Homebuilding’s contribution to the positive April jobs numbers could reflect a bouncing back of the industry after an especially tough winter, which restricted housing starts and kept would-be buyers indoors and away from open houses.
As the weather has warmed and the industry has regained its footing, the need for residential specialty trades boomed last month, just as it did in the commercial sector. Construction employers added 20,800 jobs for residential trades in April—and 112,100 since April 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Unemployment
Fewer construction workers were unemployed in April than during any month since 2006.
The BLS report showed that unemployment industry-wide dipped to 7.5% last month, a 2% improvement from March. A year ago, 9.5% of would-be builders, laborers and trades were unemployed.
The drop in the construction unemployment rate outpaced the national decline. Across all industries, unemployment edged downward to 5.4% in April from 5.5% in March. In April, employers across the board added 223,000 jobs, according to the BLS.
The coming of spring typically lowers construction unemployment, as theweather becomes friendlier to outdoor work. Along with positive residential job creation, the falling unemployment rate could be a sign that the industry is pulling out of a bad weather-induced winter slump, economists have speculated.
In fact, Basu noted, the improved numbers offer hope that construction spending will improve in the coming months, as projects delayed by frigid temperatures and record snowfalls “come to fruition.”
Filling the jobs
A plus in the job-creation column often creates a headache for construction employers trying to find qualified trades and employees, as an ongoing shortage of skilled labor continues to plague the industry.
But one industry’s loss is another’s gain this spring: The mining and logging industries lost 15,000 net jobs in April, making many of those skilled workers available to accept posts on construction job sites.
“While the loss of mining and logging jobs isn’t necessarily a good thing for the economy, it has likely had a beneficial effect on construction employment,” Basu said in a statement. He noted that the migration of displaced workers from those fields likely accounted for at least part of the decrease in the construction unemployment rate in April.
Still, the number of new jobs means it’s a good time for construction workers and those hoping to enter the industry to find well-paying positions.
Fortune reported that job openings in construction are growing at a faster pace than unemployment is dropping. The magazine quotes the latest JOLTS survey, which reported a 36% increase in construction openings year-over-year.
Still, the Associated General Contractors in January reported that 87% of construction companies feared they would have trouble filling professional positions and craft worker jobs.
Credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics
The number of open, unfilled construction sector positions increased noticeably in February. Overall, the construction labor market has been characterized by relatively higher levels of turnover over the last few months, with an increase in hiring and quits at the end of 2014 and an upward trend in job openings.
According to the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) and NAHB analysis, the number of open construction sector jobs for February (on a seasonally adjusted basis) increased to 166,000 from an upwardly revised count of 137,000 in January.
The February 2015 estimate of unfilled construction jobs is the highest total since July of 2007.
On a three-month moving average basis, the open position rate for the construction sector increased slightly to 2.27% in February. Over the last year, the open construction jobs rate has typically been higher than the rates that were experienced during the 2001-2003 period prior to the building boom. The open rate has been trending upward since 2012.
The construction sector hiring rate, as measured on a three-month moving average basis, declined in February to 5.77%, which is still elevated compared to a soft parch for job hiring in 2014.
The February number of job quits in construction fell to 96,000, off a significantly downwardly revised level for January (105,000). This change returns the levels of quits in construction back to trend, after a surge in December.
Monthly employment data for March 2015 (the employment count data from the BLS establishment survey are published one month ahead of the JOLTS data) indicate that total employment in home building/remodeling stands at 2.418 million, broken down as 692,000 builders and 1.726 million residential specialty trade contractors.
In March, home builders and remodelers lost 2,800 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, the first monthly drop since May 2012. However, over the last 12 months, the industry has created 136,000 jobs.
Since the low point of industry employment following the Great Recession, the residential construction industry has gained 431,700 positions, although employment remains 1.032 million lower than the peak level seen in early 2006. The industry has been adding on average just under 10,000 jobs per month over the last six months. However, many builders continue to cite access to labor as a business challenge as the market recovers (see this Builder/Metrostudy labor market analysis for recent industry survey data).
In March, the unemployment rate for construction workers fell to 7.9%. The unemployment rate for the construction occupation has been on a general decline since reaching a peak rate of 22% in February 2010.
For the economy as a whole, the February JOLTS data indicate that the hiring rate held steady at 3.5% of total employment. The hiring rate had been in the 3.1% to 3.5% range since January 2011 but rose above 3.5% for the first time in September as job creation accelerated at the end of 2014. The rate stayed above 3.5% through December. The overall job openings rate ticked up to 3.5% in February.
Suezette Yasmin Robotham, M.S., My Peers Call Me “The Talent Whisperer”: Human Capital Strategist That Knows Talent Acquisition
Mar 31, 2015 Original Source
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” – Maya Angelou
Salary.
It matters.
A friend and I recently had a conversation about the importance of compensation for our work, and I’m not even going to pretend that it doesn’t matter. While I could stand tall on a soap box and list the three other things that I think (in my own humble opinion of course) are more important than your paycheck including: your relationship with the person managing you, work-life balance, and feeling passionate about the work that you’re doing; the numbers before and after the comma on your offer letter can and should reflect the expectations of all parties involved.
Several years ago, when I was a young lass stepping into my first role that did not offer a salary schedule and instead informed me that my salary would be commensurate with experience, I was stumped. When I did the math: a B.S. from THE University of Florida + a graduate degree at 23 from one of the country’s top policy schools + almost three years working in the central office of a large urban school district + work experience that went all the way back to my first summer job at the age of 14, should have equaled big bank. And in retrospect at 25/26ish my salary, in Atlanta, was great. However, I still had no earthly idea who and what had determined the “commensurateness” of my experience. Even when I was promoted from a manager to the director level in my third month of work- I had no clue what played into how my new salary was calculated.
Fast forward seven years and I finally get it.
At this point you’re probably like Suezette, hurry up and spill it. Well here goes. Salary is in fact commensurate with experience. Before you throw up your hands and ask me to leave you where I found you, follow me here for a second. Most organizations have determined by organizational structure and level, title and salary bands by which every single person should be paid within the context of their role. Salary bands allow organizations to set clear and fair (sometimes) boundaries for determining employee salary on several predetermined factors. The factors typically stirred into the compensation recipe include: previous salary history, education (degree/and sometimes the tier of your college/university), work experience, geography –cost of living allowances, and your experience in comparison to the other folks at your level within that title band.
For example, say we have three manager level employees coming to the table. One of the managers may have a slightly higher salary because of more years of experience in addition to having a post-baccalaureate degree. On the other hand a newer manager might still have a higher salary if they are located in the New York office instead of the office in Atlanta.
Trust me; salary calculation is an icky science that I personally prefer to stay away from on the employer side. What do I encourage you to do on the employee side is directly and respectfully ask the hiring manager/HR team what their definition of “salary commensurate with experience” is and the factors that play into the numbers tabulation. And when in doubt…negotiate.
SnapDragon Associates- Recruiting for the Building Materials Industry 