It is too early to know what impact the devastation from Hurricane Harvey will have on construction materials prices and supply. There have been immediate price surges for motor fuels because of refinery shutdowns; these will affect supply all along pipelines to the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest that depend on Gulf Coast production or imports.
Filling craft positions and some salaried positions remains as great a challenge for contractors as it was a year ago, according to participants in AGC's 2017 Workforce Survey, released on Tuesday.
August 31, 2017
Construction employment increased by 6,000 for the month and 191,000 (2.8%) y/y. The July total, 6,899,000, was the largest since October 2008. Average hourly earnings in construction increased 2.4% y/y to $28.90, or 9.6% higher than the average for all private-sector employees ($26.36, a rise of 2.5% y/y).
August 07, 2017
Seasonally adjusted construction employment rose in 41 states from June 2016 to June 2017, decreased in eight states and the District of Columbia, and remained unchanged in Iowa, an AGC analysis of BLS data released on Friday showed.
July 28, 2017
The producer price index (PPI) for final demand in June, not seasonally adjusted, increased 0.2% from May and 2.0% year-over-year (y/y) from June 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Thursday.
July 21, 2017
Construction spending totaled $1.230 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in May, nearly the same as in April (although that figure was revised up by $11 billion or 0.9%), the Census Bureau reported on Monday. Spending has varied little in the first five months of 2017, but the rate in all five months exceeded the previous high set in 2006 (without adjusting for inflation).
July 07, 2017
Headlines on recent news stories suggest rising construction materials and labor costs are pushing up project prices and may be contributing to cancellations, but the articles point to other possible explanations.
June 26, 2017
Seasonally adjusted construction employment rose in 42 states from May 2016 to May 2017 and fell in eight states and the District of Columbia, an AGC analysis of BLS data released Friday showed.
June 19, 2017
There were 203,000 construction industry job openings, not seasonally adjusted, at the end of April—the highest April level since 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Tuesday in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).
June 12, 2017
Nonfarm payroll employment in May rose by 138,000, seasonally adjusted, from April and by 2,226,000 (1.6%) year-over-year (y/y), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% in April.
June 05, 2017
