{"id":26617,"date":"2025-03-28T14:47:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T18:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.construction.com\/?post_type=blog&p=26617"},"modified":"2025-03-28T14:47:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T18:47:33","slug":"five-years-since-the-pandemic-where-the-labor-market-stands-now","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.construction.com\/blog\/five-years-since-the-pandemic-where-the-labor-market-stands-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Years Since the Pandemic: Where the Labor Market Stands Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Olevia Sharbaugh Starkey, Economist at Dodge Construction Network<\/em><\/p>\n

Five years ago, on March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. While the U.S. labor force has largely recovered from the sustained lows brought on by the pandemic, there remains much uncertainty for the labor market in the future.<\/p>\n

Total U.S. job openings as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for January of this year came in at 7.7 million, 8% above the January estimate for 2020 before the pandemic was officially declared. The January 2025 estimate also represents a 3% increase from the revised December 2024 openings. Each year the JOLTS data is revised to reflect updates to the Current Employment Statistics estimates (to which the JOLTS data is benchmarked). Each month in 2024 experienced downward revisions to the total U.S. job openings, resulting in 3.166 million less job openings recorded over the year than previously estimated.<\/p>\n

Construction job openings in January came in 15% higher than the December estimate at 236,000. However, this is a 22% decline from the January 2020 estimate, indicating that this sector of the labor market has cooled significantly from the pre-pandemic period. In fact, December of 2024 represented the lowest level of construction job openings since October of 2017. Despite the drag in job openings, construction hires increased 8% to 353,000 in January of 2025, the highest level since May of last year. Total separations also increased 25% over the month, however, the vast majority of this increase came from an increase in quits, indicating that layoffs and other separations remain stable at this time.<\/p>\n

Though risks are mounting around weaker economic growth (driven by higher prices and more restrictive immigration policies), the demand for construction has not diminished. Projects entering planning and construction employment have both remained largely positive and stable over the past year, indicating that there is work to be done and firms who are looking to hire for now.<\/p>\n

Data Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/jlt\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":26563,"template":"","class_list":["post-26617","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFive Years Since the Pandemic: Where the Labor Market Stands Now | Dodge Construction Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Five years post-pandemic: analyze where the construction labor market stands today, from employment levels to long-term hiring challenges.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.construction.com\/blog\/five-years-since-the-pandemic-where-the-labor-market-stands-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Five Years Since the Pandemic: Where the Labor Market Stands Now | Dodge 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