Here’s Where All the Construction Workers Went
Date Posted: October 21, 2015
Posted In: News, Workforce,
From The Wall Street Journal: The Wall Street Journal has chronicled builders’ complaints about a shortage of construction workers and wondered why the labor pool appears so shallow when employment levels are still well below those of the boom years.
Indeed, industry-wide employment cratered from 2006 to 2011, losing nearly 2.3 million jobs. It’s gotten well less than half of those back. Where did they all go?
Well, the Census Bureau’s job-to-job flows program tracks workers as they move in and out of industries. The data isn’t that easy to use and underlying microdata isn’t public, but agency economists Hubert Janicki and Erika McEntarfer dove in recently and came up with some interesting findings.
Among construction workers who became unemployed for more than three months between 2006 and 2009:
- About 40% stayed in construction, either returning to their former employer or landing with a new one.
- About one-third switched to another industry, but only after sitting on the sidelines for more than a year. Typical destinations included work as general laborers, landscapers and truck drivers.