Construction Labor Shortages Persist, Reports Annual Marcum Job Analysis

The construction industry continues to face a skilled labor shortage, with worker scarcity worsening since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Marcum LLP’s annual analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

The construction industry has slowly begun to recover jobs lost in the early months of 2020. But the rate of recovery has put the industry significantly behind the pre-pandemic pace of employment growth.

The residential sector, buoyed by a boom in new home construction, has gained employees at a faster pace than the nonresidential sector over the past two years. Nonresidential construction has recovered jobs at a slower pace due to behavioral changes such as the increased prevalence of remote work and e-commerce.

The pace of hiring would occur at a more rapid pace if not for ongoing construction labor shortages. While the construction industry has grappled with labor shortages since long before the pandemic, worker scarcity now affects a majority of economic segments.

The surplus of open positions has empowered workers to switch jobs, or even industries, in search of higher pay.

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