ConstructConnect Blog

On a typical Earth Day, the construction industry is usually called out equally for its role as both a sustainability leader and as a leading offender when it comes to the size of its carbon footprint. 

It’s been a little over a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In the days and weeks that followed, we started to get a feel of how it would impact our lives as states began issuing stay-at-home orders, mandating people shelter in place except for essential work and activities.

Long viewed as a male-dominated field, the construction industry has slowly been adding more and more women to their offices and jobsites as they fill roles as varied as construction technologists to painters.   

Despite being the leader in technology, research, and health sciences, the US on January 14, 2021, was the country with the highest number of COVID-19 cases surging as high as 23.1 million and more than 384K deaths.

It is no news that the global economy has been a bit shaky for years now, then the pandemic struck and everything went spiraling downward. Statistics show that unemployment was at 14.7% in April 2020, the highest rate in America since the Great Depression, and gross domestic product fell by 4.8%.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s top news and happenings in the construction industry. Each week, we’ll take a look at some of the interesting local, regional, and national stories about construction to keep you better informed of the goings-on in the industry.

The construction industry can be volatile and unpredictable at the best of times. With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, construction work is taking a hard hit. Projects are getting delayed and even canceled as regions open and close to try to slow the virus's spread.

In July, according to the Employment Situation report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the total number of jobs in the U.S. climbed by 1.8 million (after gains of 4.8 million in June and 2.7 million in May) and the seasonally adjusted (SA) unemployment rate eased to 10.2% (after readings of 11.1% in June, 13.0% in May, and 14.4% in April).

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s top news and happenings in the construction industry. Each week, we’ll take a look at some of the interesting local, regional, and national stories about construction to keep you better informed of the goings-on in the industry.

Social distancing may feel surreal in the beginning—coworkers avoiding physical contact, people separated by partitions, everyone wearing masks. It might even seem a little lonely with a lot of our coworkers still forced to work at home as organizations ramp up operations, allowing people to return to work in phases. Nonetheless, over time, we'll get used to a new "normal" as novel ways of working emerge.