Stimulus: Construction Workers Say, Bring It On

A workforce battered by layoffs and a 15.3% unemployment rate is ready to get to work, even if it means moving or retraining

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Mike Agostini needs a job. Having worked in the construction industry for 15 years—starting out as a laborer and moving into supervisory positions—he was laid off in January 2008 by a Kissimmee (Fla.) real estate firm. Agostini, 45, had been earning $93,000 a year supervising repair work on homes the company sold. Now he is collecting unemployment insurance on an extension; his last check will arrive next week. He says he's willing and able to do any construction job that might come of the $825 billion stimulus package that is working its way through Congress.

"I'll do anything — drywall, electrical, plumbing, repairs, general labor," says Agostini, who moved in with his parents in May after having his home foreclosed on. "If it's $12 an hour digging trenches, give me a shovel and point the way."

Agostini is one of hundreds of thousands of out-of-work construction workers around the country. At 15.3%, the construction industry is suffering the highest unemployment rate of any sector of the economy. The home-building boom kept the building trades near full employment for years, but fortunes shifted quickly after the subprime bubble burst and the housing crisis unfolded into a global credit crisis.

two years, 800,000 lost jobs

Now, as the U.S. plans to carry out the largest public works program since the New Deal, that workforce is preparing for what it hopes will be a boom of another sort. President-Elect Barack Obama has been making the case for a stimulus plan that would include massive federal expenditures on infrastructure projects—such as repairing schools, bridges, and roads—to employ more Americans. The U.S. House of Representatives introduced a version of the bill on Jan. 15.

Will the workers be there to tackle the jobs? Rajeev Dhawan, a professor at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business, is confident they will. Other economists agree. "I'm not worried about a skill shortage, given the slack in the economy; everybody's begging for work or will be soon," says Nariman Behravesh, an economist for Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm.

A Jan. 9 report by Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, both of whom will serve in advisory roles in the Obama administration, estimates that of the 3 million jobs Obama says he'll help save or create, about 678,000 will be in construction. That number comes close to covering the numbers of recent layoffs in the industry; over the past two years, about 800,000 construction jobs were lost, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Construction and manufacturing firms, labor unions and their allies are pressing Obama and Congress to make infrastructure and construction work a heavy focus of the stimulus package, which will also include funding for education, health care, expanding broadband access, and tax cuts. On Jan. 8 the Associated General Contractors of America announced that a survey of U.S. contractors indicates they could lay off up to 30% of their workers through 2010 because of anticipated downturn in construction activity. The group said a robust stimulus plan could reverse the job loss to 25% growth.