Soaring Hourly Wages of U.S Construction Workers

According to a recent analysis of U.S. government employment data the hourly wages of construction workers in the united states is increasing a lot faster than people working in other industries. Reports from the Federal Bureau of Labour statistics indicate that hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees have seen a 6.1% increase in the last 12 months. 

Private sector production employees saw an increase of 5.8% in their average pay. This means that an average construction worker is now able to earn 17.2% more per hour than an average private sector employee.

Record High Construction Employment

Last month, November 2022 the total number of people working in the US construction industry hit a record high of 7.75 million. The industry is now employing 248,000 more people than it was at this time last year. The unemployment rate in the construction industry is also going down seeing as 20,000 construction workers were hired in the last month alone. According to the Associated general contractors of America there has been a 16% reduction in unemployed construction workers from November 2021 to November 2022. The unemployment rate of workers that have prior construction work experiences has also gone down from 4.7% to 3.9% this year. 

The chief economist at AGC America, Ken Simonson said that it was heartening to see the unemployment rates going down in the construction industry. He further added that since the number of available jobs continue to outpace hiring, it is obvious that employers want to bring more workers on board. It is expected that if more workers were available the number of new people hired would be much higher.

Need for More Hires

Several reports by the US government indicate that the number of construction industry related job openings far exceed the employees hired. If you look at commercial equipment traders or construction contractors you will notice that they are all looking to hire more employees. According to Simonson the excess number of job openings indicate that the industry is looking to hire more than twice as many construction workers as they were able to find.