Several recent media reports on tight labor markets may have been entirely wrong. New numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the construction labor market is not as tight as these news outlets might want us to believe.
According to a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research by Brian Dew and Kevin Cashman, several figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics seriously bring into question the claim that there is a construction labor shortage. Numerous media reports have stoked this belief, such as a recent report from the Dallas News, which claimed that the lack of available labor is amongst the biggest concerns of homebuilders in the state of Texas.
But a July 27 report from Dew and Cashman counter these claims with statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. First, they look at the ratio of unemployed construction workers to the number of construction job openings. This ratio reveals that there are more than three unemployed laborers for each construction job opening.
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