The rebound of construction activity from the deep recession is very uneven across the US. Construction jobs have increased over the last twelve months through February in only seventeen states. Total job gains have been far larger than construction job gains in each of these states. Twenty-seven states have had an increase in total jobs while construction jobs continued to decline. Six states had a decline in both total and construction jobs.

All but five the states with construction job gains over the last year are east of the Mississippi. This includes the strong Texas economy and the spillover into adjoining Louisiana and Oklahoma plus California and Oregon on the Pacific Coast where the economy is being lifted by the strong recovery in technology industries.

The six states with losses in total employment have all had their recessions aggravated by state spending cutbacks. Except for New Jersey, none of these states had been experiencing significant negative net domestic outmigration before the recession. But they are slow to recover because they have relatively small share of today’s high growth industries: finance, professional services, healthcare and technology.

Gains in total jobs in twenty-seven states, as much as 75,200 new jobs in Illinois, have not yet translated to increased demand for building space, facility capacity or property maintenance. Illinois, New York, Rhode Island and possibility Wisconsin have slim, if any, population gains in the last few years. All of these states are suffering from public spending cutbacks. Most have relatively high unemployment rates which reduce home buying, home remodeling and home maintenance. Note that the electricians, landscapers, plumbers and painters are construction workers even if most of their business is routine home maintenance. Also, most of these states, notably Florida and Georgia, had relatively large surpluses of building space before the recession due to speculative overbuilding and overly aggressive mortgage lending.

Rising total employment will eventually spur enough space demand or resumption of routine maintenance to begin a sustained rise in construction jobs in every state. But this will take more a year more of economic recovery.