Dive Brief:

• Employment in the industry is up in 223 of the nation's 339 metro areas between July 2013 and July of this year, but that is not enough to avoid problems for contractors, according to a survey done by Associated General Contractors and SmartBrief.
• The surveyors were told by 25% of companies that they had turned down work in the past year because they knew they could not supply the workers needed.
• The monthly labor report also found that the Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale metro area in Arizona lost 5% of its construction workforce— 4,800 jobs— during the 12 months the report covered.

Dive Insight:

The overall report suggests that there has been a net gain in construction employment, with the top three job-gaining metros adding 26,800 jobs and the leading three job-losing metros dropping 10,800 jobs. Nonetheless, the economy is still finding itself short of construction workers, and the recovery is by no means uniform.