KEY POINTS
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The U.S. construction market faces headwinds from weak new homebuilding, possible federal capital spending cuts, high interest rates, and tariff-driven cost uncertainty.
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Despite these challenges, recent data shows overall construction demand and employment are still growing, with put-in-place construction and sector wages both rising.
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However, job openings, hiring rates, and housing starts are declining, signaling turbulence and potential softening in some key construction market segments.
There are some known negative forces currently at play in the U.S. construction marketplace, including a level of new homebuilding that is struggling through an extended period of weakness, and indications by the new administration in Washington that it might like to cut back remaining capital spending allocations as previously set out in the IRA and IIJA bills.
Also, interest rates, in the minds of decision makers contemplating construction projects, continue to be higher than desirable, and the volatility surrounding much-talked-about tariff action threatens substantial cost hikes. Uncertainty can pose a formidable barrier to upbeat investment decisions.
Therefore, it is valid to ask how the construction marketplace is faring right now. Let’s take a look at current statistics.
We are about to see that while there are some worrying signs of activity moderation, the industry is still generally moving forward at a solid demand pace.
Put-in-Place
The Census Bureau’s figure on put-in-place (PIP) construction through the first quarter of this year records a 2.9% increase in dollar volume versus Q1 of last year. Residential’s portion of the total is up 2.5%, and nonresidential is up 3.1%.
Privately funded PIP construction is up 2.1% year over year, while the publicly sponsored component is more expansive, up 5.7%.
There’s not much to complain about concerning those high-level results.
Employment and Earnings
How about employment in the sector? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the total number of jobs in the U.S. construction sector in April 2025 was up 1.7% compared with April 2024, beating the all-jobs increase of 1.2%.
The year-over-year jobs counts were up 1.6% for residential construction, up 1.9% for nonresidential, and up +2.7% for heavy and civil engineering work. The positioning of engineering at the head of the pack is consistent with the emphasis placed on new and improved infrastructure promoted by the Biden administration.
The unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) in construction has deteriorated a bit over the past year, although not alarmingly so, rising to 5.6% from 5.2%.
As measured by the BLS, earnings increases in construction are continuing to set a warmish, if not torrid pace. While in the latest recorded month (April) the hourly all-jobs wage increase for production workers (i.e., leaving out supervisory personnel) was up 4.1%, the construction worker sub-component did a little better at up 4.4%. On a weekly wages basis, it was all jobs at up 4.4% year-over-year, with construction significantly better at up 6.0%.
So far, so good, but now we embark down some pathways with serious-seeming potholes.
Job Openings, Turnover, and Quits
First, there’s the construction data contained within the monthly JOLTS report, based on the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey conducted by the BLS. Latest nominal ‘hires’ in the sector are not far off their average over the past ten to fifteen years. But that means that the rate (as opposed to level) of hires has been gradually sinking, and at 3.6% in March of this year, it descended to its lowest point in the history of the series, which dates back to January 2000.
Construction job openings were notably elevated from 2022 through 2024, approaching 450,000 positions during much of that time frame. Now, they are only a bit more than half that figure, registering at 248,000. The rate of job openings has also declined, falling from a peak above 5.0% to a current placement of 2.9%.
In another sign of sector softening, construction workers have reined in their ‘quits’. Only in the best of times do workers feel confident enough to hand in their resignations, knowing they can easily find better-paying employment or climb the career ladder elsewhere. Both the quits level and rate have pulled back markedly from their heights reached in early 2022.
US Homebuilding
Second, U.S. homebuilding is mired in quicksand with no one answering the phone at the rescue center. Year-to-date (ytd) nation-wide housing starts in units are down 1.6% versus January-April 2024. Residential building permits, a leading indicator for starts, are worse at down 4.3%.
Single-family starts are down 7.1% year-to-date, while single-family permits are down 4.5%.
The worst region for new residential work is the high-population-growth South, which includes Texas and Florida, where total starts are down 7.4% and singles are down 10.6%, both year-to-date.
April’s seasonally adjusted and annualized housing starts were 1.361 million units, below the year prior’s April figure of 1.385 million. To fulfill pent-up demand, the monthly annualized number needs to be well above 1.6 million units, heading towards 2.0 million units.
Here’s something to think about. The longer housing starts fail to adequately satisfy demand, the older the stock of homes in the country becomes. Interestingly, this does deliver good news in one direction. Anyone engaged in the home renovation market will be looking at healthy prospects for some time to come.
Manufacturer Construction Spending
There are other ways in which what is going on in construction relates to broader developments in the overall economy. The construction dollars spent by manufacturers have shot up dramatically over the past several years, driven by megaprojects undertaken by computer chip makers and electric vehicle and related battery assembly-line producers.
Automation, Robotics, and AI
What does this mean for employment, though? Maybe not so much. Automation and robotics, powered by AI, are being increasingly counted on to take over routine and more sophisticated tasks. Hyundai has announced that at its new Georgia ‘metaplant’, important roles will be assumed by the Atlas humanoid robot made by Boston Dynamics.
Nor is that where the story stops. Consider a mind-boggling construction sub-sector implication. Some manufacturers are already considering that if all the work in their plants is being carried out by high-tech machinery, maybe there’s limited need for lighting.
Architect Billings
Finally, before signing off, there’s one other rather gloomy statistic on the U.S. construction marketplace that’s worthy of sharing. The AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index (ABI) retreated further in April to 43.2 from 44.1 in March.
It would be nice to close by saying the ABI was heading back above 50.0, marking a return to better revenues earned by upfront design firms for burgeoning workloads on construction projects. But, as yet, and unfortunately, that is not the case; rather, the opposite prevails.
Construction economy news and insights you can act on.
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