Construction Trend Tuesday
Thoughts on quitting
Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here. If you’d like to sponsor CTT posts, just respond to this email or drop us a comment.
The past few CTT posts have been about worker churn (or lack thereof)—industrywide job openings have plummeted, and yet contractors are historically unlikely to lay off workers (a few of you offered compelling explanations for the latter, and I’ll get to those in a future post).
This week we’re looking at how frequently construction workers are quitting their jobs. The short answer: not much, but more than they were at the end of 2024.
The longer answer: workers tend to quit more when there are lots of jobs openings (in construction and competing fields) and fewer workers, like in 2005-06 and 2022.
Starting at the end of 2022, however, worker availability improved and industrywide momentum slowed. The quit rate plunged, falling to levels not seen since the early 2010s (not a lot of construction going on then, if you’ll recall).
But quitting, somewhat surprisingly, has accelerated during the first few months of 2025. While workers are still relatively unlikely to leave their construction jobs, but this increase isn’t what I’d expect given broader conditions. Improved labor availability and fewer job openings should cause workers to cling to their current positions.
It’s possible this is just statistical noise. This data series is volatile on a month-to-month basis. But even looking at the 12-month moving average, which should mute any noise and eliminate wonky seasonal factors, we see that the quit rate has started to rise for the first time since 2022.
What’s Next
We get some pretty important inflation data this week, and it’s already been a busy week for economic news. We’ll cover that and a whole lot more in Week in Review, our every-Friday post that gives you everything you need to know about the economy in a breezy, five minute read.
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In our business we have noticed this spring an increase in former team members who left our team in the past few years, and also individuals who work at competitors contacting us for employment. They have stated challenges with their current employers, or perceived better opportunity with us. If there are companies struggling, it may be an indication of jumping off sinking ships.