Wage freezes and cost squeezes

The pain continues unabated for construction companies and workers. The industry lost another 75,000 employees in January, seasonally adjusted, virtually unchanged from the monthly average of 77,000 over the past 12 months, according to data the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Feb. 5.

For the first time, BLS included in its data release information on both "construction workers" and total employment in the construction industry. The former category covers what in other industries BLS calls production or nonsupervisory workers. Construction workers accounted for 4.3 million of the 5.6 million total employment in the industry. In the past year, about 14 percent of both construction and other workers in the industry lost their jobs, according to a Feb. 9 AGC of America release.

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