Where Did All the Construction Workers Go?

That's the question asked by Census Bureau researchers in a Research Matters blog post. With the economy picking up steam, builders and contractors are reporting (anecdotally) some difficulty in finding construction workers, according to the researchers. What happened to all those housing bubble workers after the bubble burst?

Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. After analyzing Job-to-Job Flows public-use data and zeroing in on those workers who stopped working for more than three months between 2006 and 2009, the researchers found that most of those workers had either abandoned the industry entirely or were still jobless long after the end of the Great Recession...

• about 40% eventually found another construction job
• about 33% eventually found work in another industry, but typically after more than a year without a job
• about 25% were still not employed as of the end of 2013

Source: Census Bureau, Research Matters Blog, Where Did All The Construction Workers Go?