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What Goes Up
Quantifying construction's recovery in Connecticut
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Business New Haven
9/18/2000
By: BNH
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The construction industry in Connecticut is back. Sort of.
The industry cratered during the 1989-92 recession, losing almost 34,000 jobs - 42 percent of the total. That came on the heels of what proved to be unsustainable growth during the boom of the 1980s, a period during which the construction industry added 31,000 jobs, swelling its employment numbers by 64 percent.
It's been a long, slow climb back, but since 1993 the construction industry has reclaimed about a third of its lost jobs, and today accounts for about three percent of Connecticut's gross state product, roughly $4.4 billion annually.
Business cycles in the construction industry typically exceed those of the economy at large, according to The Connecticut Economic Digest, published jointly by the state's Department of Labor and Department of Economic & Community Development. That is, its economic peaks are higher - and its troughs lower.
Changes in mortgage-interest rates, credit availability, consumer confidence and overall economic conditions have a greater impact on construction than on most other industries.
Last year (the most recent for which figures are available), construction companies employed about 61,000 workers in Connecticut, comprising 4.2 percent of the workforce. Between 1992 and 1999, the industry posted a 27.6-percent growth in employment - outpacing overall private-sector job growth of 10.3 percent during the same period, according to The Connecticut Economy.
Over that period, however, the number of construction businesses in the state actually declined by 11.1 percent, against a private-sector rise in number of companies of 3.8 percent.
In wage terms, construction jobs in the state paid an average of $43,342 last year, slightly above the state average for all jobs of $43,195. Within the industry the highest wages were found in non-residential construction, which paid an average of almost $58,000 in 19999. The lowest average wages - $30,510 - were found in the painting and paperhanging sector.
The journal foresees steady growth in the construction industry, buoyed by major projects at the University of Connecticut and Yale, as well as expansion of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge in New Haven and Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks and the new Pfizer corporate campus in New London.
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