he construction industry lost 7,000 jobs between February and March, following a similar decline of 6,000 the month before but extended a pattern of modest year-over-year job increases, according to a recent analysis of new federal employment data by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials said that lack of long-term federal highway and transit funding threatens to hold down future job gains.
“Both the small monthly change and the March-to-March gain of 55,000 jobs, or 1%, is consistent with the uneven, tentative recovery that contractors have been reporting nationwide,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist.