SMU Community Chat
April 1, 2021
Construction: A Tale of Two Sectors
Written by Sandy Williams
Business conditions in the construction industry are split along the residential/nonresidential line, said Ken Simonson, chief economist at the Association of General Contractors of America, who spoke during Wednesday’s SMU Community Chat Webinar. Employment levels in the industry plunged last year at a similar rate between the two segments as the pandemic took hold in March and April. Since then the residential side of the market has recovered more strongly due to support from the Paycheck Protection Program and a surge in home building and home renovations.
Delving into the numbers, it is clear that residential construction fared much better than nonresidential. Residential construction employment rebounded with a 19% annual gain from April 2020 compared to an 8.2% increase for nonresidential. Essentially all of the jobs lost during the early stages of the pandemic in residential construction have been regained as opposed to only half of those in nonresidential construction, AGC reports.
