Shankar P. covers life sciences, energy and corporate strategy. He has been at NJBIZ since 1999. 
The construction industry in New Jersey and elsewhere in the country hemorrhaged 64,000 jobs in February, and unemployment in that sector fell nationwide to a 14-year low, the Associated General Contractors of America, in Washington, D.C., said in its latest report Friday, citing federal employment figures.
“It’s getting worse, and there is no indication things may turn around,” said Brian Tobin, executive director of the AGC’s New Jersey chapter, in Edison. The state chapter has some 300 members involved in heavy and highway construction, he said.
New Jersey’s construction industry lost 19,000 jobs between January and December 2009, bringing it down to 134,800 jobs, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Construction employment in the
Tobin said his chapter’s member firms usually rely on private-sector commercial projects to offset shortages of opportunities in their principal markets of bridges, tunnels, site work and ground freezing (underground construction). “But even that has dried up now,” he said of private commercial projects, like office and industrial buildings.
The federal stimulus program has, however, helped “save some jobs” in the state’s construction industry, Tobin said.
Tobin said the construction jobs data for January and February “are down anyway because of the time of the year,” and was not surprised by the latest employment data for the sector. “There are usually signs of a recovery in early March,” but he doesn’t expect that to be the case this year, he added.
Ken Simonson, AGC’s chief economist, said the industry’s job losses in February were consistent with the prior six months, and not mainly attributable to the weather.
Nationwide, overall declines in construction activity have cost 2.2 million construction workers their jobs since industry employment peaked in June 2006 — a 28 percent drop, Simonson said.
Construction has accounted for more than 1.9 million of the nearly 8.5 million nonfarm payroll job losses since the recession began in December 2007, or 23 percent of the total, even thought the industry employs only 4.3 percent of all workers.
“The industry has gone from being a symptom of our economic problems to a victim of them,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer.
E-mail Shankar P. at shankar_p@njbiz.com
