Unfilled Construction Jobs at Post-Recession High

It’s not your imagination: It really is getting harder to find residential construction workers.

The estimated number of job openings in the construction sector increased to 404,000 in April, a post-Great Recession high, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Moreover, this marks a significant increase over the 258,000 job openings estimated in April 2018.

Providing further analysis in this Eye on Housing blog post, NAHB Chief Economist Rob Dietz noted that more modest growth rates for housing construction for 2019 and 2020 are likely to place downward pressure on construction job openings in future data releases. In other words, 2019 may be the year in which the job openings rate for construction levels off, albeit at elevated levels. This would nonetheless be a continuing sign for the need to recruit additional workers into the industry.