Construction Job Losses Accelerate
Construction Trend Tuesday (#31)
Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here.
Private construction employment declined by 9,000 jobs in November, according to payroll processing firm ADP. The industry, which did not experience any monthly employment declines during a 49-month span stretching from August 2021 to August 2025, has now lost jobs in two of the past three months.
That’s according to ADP. The more focused-upon Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data are arguably worse (and more outdated because of the shutdown), indicating that the construction industry added just 2,000 jobs from April to September.
As you can see below, the BLS data show significantly slower construction job growth in 2025.
What do we take from this? The construction industry is shrinking. Spending data indicate the same thing. That’s not a particularly new development, though it is an upsetting one, and conditions are unlikely to improve unless interest rates fall and policy becomes less volatile.
What’s Next
This week brings us job opening, hiring, and firing data for October, and update on small business optimism, and some Fed projections. We’ll cover that and a whole lot more in Week in Review, our every-Friday post that covers all the economic news and data in a breezy, five minute read.
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