Construction Employment in July
Construction employment continued its upward trend in July, adding 25,000 jobs. This growth aligns with the average monthly gain over the past year. The sector contributing most to this growth was specialty trade contractors, which added 19,000 jobs. Following is the overall summary by the BLS:

The unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 4.3 percent in July, and the number of unemployed people increased by 352,000 to 7.2 million. These measures are higher than a year earlier, when the jobless rate was 3.5 percent, and the number of unemployed people was 5.9 million.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.0 percent) and Whites (3.8 percent) increased in July. The jobless rates for adult women (3.8 percent), teenagers (12.4 percent), Blacks (6.3 percent), Asians (3.7 percent), and Hispanics (5.3 percent) showed little or no change over the month.

Among the unemployed, the number of people on temporary layoff increased by 249,000 to 1.1 million in July. The number of permanent job losers changed little at 1.7 million.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 1.5 million in July. This measure is up from 1.2 million a year earlier. The long-term unemployed accounted for 21.6 percent of all unemployed people in July.

The labor force participation rate, at 62.7 percent, changed little in July and was little changed over the year. The employment-population ratio was little changed at 60.0 percent in July but is down by 0.4 percentage point over the year.

SOURCE:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm