Construction employment decreased by 15,000 jobs in March following an increase of 65,000 jobs in February, according to www.abc.org.
The construction industry unemployment rate declined by 0.4 percentage points to 7.4 percent, which is 1 percentage point lower than at the same time in 2017. The national unemployment rate for all industries remained unchanged at 4.1 percent for a sixth consecutive month.
The construction sector has added 228,000 net new jobs during the past 12 months, which is a substantial 3.3 percent increase in the number of workers directly employed by the industry.
"The hope had been that the job report today would be strong, indicating that the U.S. economy possesses sufficient momentum to steer through a short, highly symbolic trade war," says ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu. "Instead, the jobs report was weak, with nonfarm industry payrolls rising by a disappointing 103,000 net new positions. Still, the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.1 percent, which means the report wasn't purely negative. Moreover, one month of data tends to be inconclusive regarding the direction of large-scale macroeconomic trends by definition.
"Nonetheless, today's numbers cannot simply be ignored," Basu says. "The weak jobs report increases the probability that uncertainty attributable to policy pronouncements emerging from Washington and Beijing can trip up an economic expansion that should be proceeding swimmingly in the context of recently enacted tax reform. For construction firms, in particular, the changing news cycle is not helpful. Those who finance construction projects need to be comfortable with the notion that the economy will still be supportive once construction is complete. In other words, the construction industry requires a higher level of stable, persistent confidence to support growth than other industries given the risk that accompanies financing projects and time to build. Confidence is likely dissipating presently."
