"Construction took the biggest hit, dropping by 28,000 for the month."
This is especially troubling. Construction jobs should be increasing in May.
Did I miss something? Were there any large scale weather events in May which killed construction jobs?
What continues to effect construction is the fact that small to medium size builders can not get a loan now.
They do not have the bank line they had 2-4 years ago. So even if they have projects to build, they can not start them because of lack of credit. This trickles down to less construction jobs.
The only companies that are getting financing are the large companies building multifamily and elderly housing projects.
This is why the starts numbers have been a much higher percentage of those type of buildings.
Did I miss something? Were there any large scale weather events in May which killed construction jobs?
For starters, I work in structural steel, so I've kinda got the worm's eye view of this deal.
The short and simple answer:
There haven't been any major construction projects in our market area (outside of stuff that got Federal Slush Funds) for over two years.
Lately, those "Stimulus" jobs have been completed or run out of interest/money.
We've done around a third of our normal business up until now, and our schedule for what should be our busiest time of the year has gone to jack-point-zip-diddly-sh** nothing.
Reality can be a bi***, can't it?