“That’s when I know I’m alive,” says Allaway, a 20-year industry veteran who often worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks before he was laid off in July.
Despite enduring the longest hiatus of his life, he has no plans to switch careers. “I’m just riding it out,” says Allaway, who lives in Oak Lawn, Ill. “This is the thing I really want to be doing.”
Like millions of his colleagues, he might have a long wait. While most of the job market continued to rebound in January, the construction industry remained mired in its worst downturn since the Great Depression. It lost 75,000 jobs last month, almost single-handedly preventing U.S. employment from showing its second gain in two years. Employers overall shed 20,000 jobs.
As the jobless rate hovers around 10%, unemployment in construction jumped to 24.7%, highest on record since 1976. Construction has accounted for nearly a quarter of all job losses the past year, though the industry employs 4.3% of non-farm employees. Even manufacturing added 11,000 jobs in January, its first net increase since the recession began in December 2007.
Many contractors are doing jobs for less than cost. Thousands are going bankrupt or shutting down. And many workers are shifting to new careers, such as truck driving or airplane repair.
Construction “should probably replace manufacturing as the key problem child in terms of trying to turn job growth from negative to positive,” says Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.
The sector has lost about 2 million jobs since the recession started. While that’s a bit less than the 2.2 million factory jobs eliminated, the construction workforce is about half the size of manufacturing.
Relief is not imminent. The industry will likely slash 50,000 jobs a month the first half of 2010 before a housing rebound offsets a continuing free fall in the commercial sector by late this year, says Ken Simonson, chief economist for Associated General Contractors of America. He predicts another 5% of construction workers will lose their jobs in 2010.
The industry is caught in the vortex of the economy’s fiercest headwinds. Residential building tanked after the collapse of the housing bubble in 2006. As housing inventories dwindled to 30-year lows, job losses in home construction began to moderate last spring, though the sector has continued to shed workers, slicing 15,000 in January.
Yet just as the housing picture started to brighten, commercial building began a steep descent early last year as the recession sharply pushed up vacancy rates for office buildings, strip shopping centers and factories. About 60,000 commercial construction jobs were eliminated in January.
FULL STORY: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2010-02-25-construction25_ST_N.htm
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