Archive for category: News

Originally Posted on www.compsmag.com

The three women shared their stories over Zoom during a Lean In Circle for Tradeswomen, one of 76 launched nationwide and in Canada this year by the North America’s Building Trades Unions and Lean In, the women’s advocacy group started by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. About 700 tradeswomen are participating the program, designed to help them navigate persistent bias and harassment on construction sites, from unwanted sexual advances to being assigned lesser duties like traffic control or fire watch.

Jordyn Bieker, an apprentice sheet metal worker in Denver, said she felt uncomfortable that her foreman asked her pointed questions about being gay. Yunmy Carroll, a veteran steamfitter, said a worker at a training session declared that women in construction are “whores.” It’s a culture industry leaders are fighting to change in the hopes of recruiting more women into a sector with an aging workforce that faces chronic labor shortages.
As spending on infrastructure rises, construction firms will need to hire at least 430,000 new skilled laborers in 2021, according to an analysis of federal data by the Associated Builders and Contractors. Right now, only 4% of construction laborers in the U.S. are women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We are really only employing from half the workforce,” said Brian Turmail, the Associated General Contractors of America’s vice president of public affairs, who also spearheads workforce development. “We are struggling with labor shortages with one hand tied behind our back.” This comes at a time when the pandemic has exacted a disproportionate toll on jobs where women dominate, like restaurant servers and cashiers. Nearly 2.5 million women lost jobs and stopped looking for work during the pandemic. Meanwhile, much of the construction industry was deemed essential, sparing it from mass layoffs. For advocates, it is evidence that more women should aspire to construction careers, which start with paid apprenticeships and can lead to unionized jobs with middle-class wages.

The median salary for plumbers and electricians, for instance, is about $56,000 a year, with the top 10% of earners making $98,000. But only about 2% of plumbers and 3% of the country’s electricians are women. “We see this all the time. When jobs are higher paid, when jobs have more security, when jobs have higher benefits, they often go to men,” said Sandberg, who partnered with NABTU to bring her signature “Lean in Circles” program to tradeswomen after meeting Liz Shuler, now the president of the AFL-CIO, and Judaline Cassidy, a New York plumber and union leader who had formed a Lean In Circle on her own in 2017. The good news is that gains already made by women appear to have held steady during the pandemic, in contrast to the Great Recession that hit the industry hard.

By Jonathan Garber  | FOXBusiness  |  Originally posted on www.foxbusiness.com

Mounting inflationary pressures held back nonresidential construction spending in July, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Nonresidential construction spending edged up 0.1% in July to $786.7 billion but was negative when adjusted for inflation. Spending fell on a monthly basis in six of 16 subcategories and was unchanged in three categories.

Total nonresidential spending was down 4.2% from the year prior.

“The nonresidential construction spending numbers are meaningfully worse than they initially appear,” said ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu.

“Higher materials prices and worsening skills shortages represent primary culprits,” he added. “Many project owners are delaying projects due to elevated construction service delivery costs.”

Construction input prices were 23.1% higher in July than the year prior as the combination of a rebounding economy, supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19, stimulus measures and labor shortages sent costs soaring.

Last month, prices for steel mill products shot up 10.8%, iron and steel prices climbed 7.8% and natural gas surged 13.5%. Those products have seen respective price increases of 108.6%, 89.2% and 146.7% over the past year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Prices for other input costs, including fabricated structural metal products and lumber, were also sharply higher compared with year-ago levels.

It remains to be seen how long the inflationary pressures may last.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at his Jackson Hole symposium speech last week said inflation at these levels is a “cause for concern” but reiterated the central bank’s belief that the current pressures are temporary. 

Powell signaled the Fed could begin tapering its asset purchase program before the end of this year but said rate hikes were further out on the horizon.

Fed fund futures traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are fully pricing in the first rate hike to occur in January 2023.

Originally posted on www.cdrecycler.com

ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu says today’s input price increases can meaningfully affect contractor fortunes by trimming margins and delaying the onset of projects.

Construction input prices rose 0.6 percent in July, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index data released today. Nonresidential construction input prices increased 0.8 percent for the month.

Construction input prices are 23.1 percent higher than a year ago, while nonresidential construction input prices increased 23.4 percent over that span.

Energy prices continue to experience substantial year-over-year price increases. The price of natural gas is up 146.7 percent, while crude petroleum and unprocessed energy materials prices are up 102.9 percent and 93.8 percent, respectively. Prices for steel mill products increased 10.8 percent for the month and are up 108.6 percent for the year.

“One’s definition of transitory needs to evolve with these data,” says ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu. “While it is quite likely that there will be less inflation a year from now, a rebounding economy, ongoing supply chain disruptions and limited productive capacity have conspired to generate rapid price increases.

“Many economists insist that the current situation is merely temporary; still, today’s input price increases can meaningfully affect contractor fortunes by trimming margins and delaying the onset of projects.”

According to Basu, the good and bad news is that the economy is flush with liquidity.

“Injections of money supply by the Federal Reserve, which has yet to indicate when it will begin to moderate its quantitative easing program, have helped create large pools of investable money,” he says.

A significant fraction of that money is also being invested in real estate, which Basu says will often translates into construction projects. That is consistent with the stable-to-rising backlog observed in recent months as well as ongoing confidence among contractors, reflected in ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator and Construction Confidence Index. However, Basu warns that liquidity also serves to help push prices higher.

“One can only conclude that the economy will continue to run hot into 2022 despite the malign impacts of the delta variant, producing both hefty advances in gross domestic product and unusually elevated inflation,” says Basu. “The fact that steel prices are rising is not only an indication of the recovery transpiring in goods-producing industries like construction and manufacturing, but also of the difficulty global suppliers are having keeping up with demand.

“That dynamic does not appear poised to change substantially in the very near-term, though there was some evidence of moderating inflation in the most recent Consumer Price Index report. Contractors should assiduously build contingencies into their contracts to protect themselves from additional materials price spikes. Given that construction firm services are in high demand, contractors should have enough negotiating leverage to accomplish that under most circumstances.”

Originally posted on www.enr.com

Construction’s unemployment rate dropped in July on a monthly and year-over-year basis to its lowest level in 17 months, as the industry added 11,000 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported.

But the latest monthly BLS report on the nation’s employment picture, released on Aug. 6, also showed job losses in some parts of the industry’s nonresidential sector.

Construction’s unemployment rate for July declined to 6.1% from June’s 7.5%. Last month’s rate also improved sharply from the year-earlier level of 8.9%, BLS figures show.

July’s rate was the lowest since February 2020’s mark, the last month before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Notably, construction’s July jobs increase followed  three months of downturns.

The residential building category recorded the strongest July jobs results, adding 8,300.

The nonresidential sector overall was up by 2,900 positions, but a gain of 7,500 in the nonresidential specialty trade contractors segment masked declines of 2,500 in nonresidential building and 2,100 in heavy and civil engineering construction.

For the 12 months ended July 31, construction overall added 224,000 jobs, an increase of 3.1%, BLS data indicate.

The bureau’s jobs figures are adjusted for seasonal differences, but its unemployment rates are not seasonally adjusted.

ABC, AGC Economists’ Analyses

Anirban Basu, Associated Builders and Contractors chief economist, traced the big upturn in nonresidential trade contractors to “considerable work underway” in upgrading existing facilities.

Basu said in a statement, “That helps explain why nonresidential specialty trade contractors added thousands of jobs last month while general [nonresidential] contractors did not.” ABC focuses on nonresidential construction.

He also pointed to liquidity in the economy as a key factor behind the recovery. Some of that capital is being invested in real estate, he said, “which translates into additional construction work.”

Still, Basu acknowledged, new construction remains “suppressed” in such segments as lodging and office buildings, due to dislocations from the pandemic.

The Associated General Contractors of America pointed out that total nonresidential construction employment is running far behind pre-pandemic levels.

Ken Simonson, AGC’s chief economist, said in a statement, “Contractors are plagued by soaring materials costs, long or uncertain delivery times and hesitancy by project owners to commit to construction.”

Simonson added, “Recovery has been especially slow in infrastructure construction,” noting that contractors in that category have regained only 37% of jobs lost in the pandemic.

Overall, the U.S. economy added 943,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate edged down to 5.4%, from June’s 5.9%.