With high demand nationwide for talent in major metro areas—as well as in many secondary and tertiary markets—construction salary gains continue a steady rise.
The U.K.’s Brexit vote last June, which called for it to exit membership in the European Union, is among factors that lowered midterm expectations for the region’s construction market, says a November report from the Euroconstruct forecasters from 19 European countries.
The prospect of an infrastructure-focused, business-friendly administration in Washington, D.C., may bode well for the construction industry, analysts say, but opinions are mixed as to whether it will lift sales of equipment out of a two-year-long slump.
Prices across Europe are “broadly flat,” rising by around 2% in France and Germany and more slowly in southern European countries, says Simon Rawlinson, head of strategic research and insight at Arcadis LLP, London.
As President Obama’s signature was still drying on the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, enacted Dec. 4, construction-machinery lobbyists were jumping for joy.
Construction is a cyclical industry. Industry executives enduring recessions console themselves with the knowledge that, sooner or later, the bad times will pass.