Construction Trend Tuesday (#16)

Union Membership and PLAs

Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here.

In the year 2000, nearly 1.2 million construction workers were members of unions. By 2024, that number had fallen to 845,000.

Only about one in ten construction workers now belong to a union. This trend has been at least partially driven by a relative shift in construction activity to right-to-work states, largely in the south and west where construction services are (not coincidentally) less expensive

Despite this trend, the White House issued a memo last week doubling down on the Biden administration’s requirement that large federal construction projects use project labor agreements (PLAs). While PLAs don’t technically mandate union-only labor, the requirements often make it impossible to use non-union contractors.

Those who expected the President to vanquish Biden-era policymaking are predictably disappointed.

What’s Next

We get an important update on the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation later this week, equity/oil market reactions to the U.S. bombing of Iran, and a handful of housing market indicators.

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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