A solid rise in construction employment in April made the lead paragraph in today's Congresional testimony by Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Kathleen Utgoff. “Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 274,000 [seasonally adjusted] in April, and the unemployment rate held at 5.2%. The increase in payroll jobs followed revised gains of 300,000 in February [revised from 243,000] and 146,000 in March [revised from 110,000]. Over the month, employment growth was widespread. Notable gains continued in construction, mining, food services, and health care….construction employment rose by 47,000, continuing the strong growth trend of the last two years. Most of April's increase occurred in specialty trade contracting (40,000), with gains in both its residential and nonresidential components.” From April 2004 to April 2005, total construction employment expanded more than twice as fast as overall nonfarm payroll employment (4.3% vs. 1.7%) to an all-time high of 7,209,000, a gain of 296,000. Growth was nearly uniform among the five BLS components: residential building, 6.7%; nonresidential building, 3.6%; heavy and civil engineering, 2.4%; residential specialty contractors, 4.1%; and nonresidential specialty contractors, 4.5%. Seasonally adjusted average hourly earnings in construction rose just 0.9% over that span, to $19.38 per hour, 21% higher than the all-industry average for production or nonsupervisory jobs.
The employment report reinforced the continued strength of construction shown in the Census Bureau's release on Monday of value of construction put in place in March, which set a 14th consecutive record of $1.052 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate. For the first quarter of 2005 as a whole, construction exceeded the first-quarter 2004 total by 9%. Private residential construction was up 13% over the year-ago quarter, private nonresidential was up 7%, and public construction was 3% higher. The largest gains were in manufacturing construction, 31%; communication, 26%; lodging and multi-family construction, 16% each; and single-family, 14%. The broad commercial category climbed 9%, led by a 19% rise in multi-retail construction such as 'big-box” stores and shopping centers, and an 11% gain in warehouse construction. Of the two big public components, highway and street construction rose 10%; educational, 3%. Private power construction slumped another 7% from the year-ago quarter, although the smaller public power sector rose 17%.