The New Jersey construction industry got an early Christmas present late last month: state funding for a program aimed at helping military veterans transition out of active duty into the building and construction trades. The $195,000 grant will be available under the state's Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development agency in partnership with the New Jersey Building and Construction Trades Council's chapter of the national Helmets to Hardhats program. The initiative will provide many veterans with jobs in the building trades, which has posted employment gains in six of the past seven months, the state says. But while industry executives praise the program for helping to maintain a highly skilled work force, they also wonder how these recruits will fare in a marketplace still reeling from the recession.
Both the creation and retention of jobs, as well as the steep dive in demand for construction projects, are major concerns for the industry nationwide. But executives say that New Jersey took especially big hits during the last few years. The 3-million-sq-ft retail and entertainment complex Xanadu, renamed American Dream Meadowlands, in East Rutherford, which once promised to create more than 30,000 construction jobs, stalled in 2008 (see p. 46). American Dream's new owners, Las Vegas-based Triple Five Worldwide Development Co., announced plans in May to complete the project, although the construction work force has been trimmed to 9,000.