“Back to Work” recently looked at data suggesting that other, healthier metro economies in the region may be pulling workers from the Las Vegas area, especially the tens of thousands of construction workers still suffering from the busted housing market, most of whom were Hispanic.
Now new data in the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s fine blog suggests that construction workers across the nation lucky enough to find jobs in other sectors of the economy are suffering great losses to their incomes, more than other workers forced to retool themselves.
The implications are worth thinking about for Las Vegas: tens of thousands of workers may either be leaving, thinking of leaving, or taking jobs that pay much less than building houses did five years ago. What can those who help the unemployed do about this? What might this mean for the overall health of the Las Vegas economy?
What does the chart show?
Each cell in the table represents the relative effect of switching industries on the post-unemployment wages of workers in a given industry… For example, of those workers who lost jobs in manufacturing in … 2008… those who became reemployed in any of the other four sectors earned 9.9 percent less than those unemployed manufacturing workers who found jobs in the manufacturing sector. For construction workers, the effect of switching sectors reduced wages by 18.8 percent. In our sample, about 50 percent of workers who lost jobs in construction found jobs elsewhere but mostly in the high- and low-skilled service industries. For comparison, we repeated the calculations … and the results are displayed in the columns under the 2001 and 1991 headings. It is true that industry-switching unemployed construction workers also experienced large wage declines after the 2001 recession, but the decline for the 2008 panel was considerably larger.
So there you have it: construction workers who find jobs in these other sectors of the economy are suffering nearly a 19 percent drop in wages. That’s steep.
Again, any data shedding light on the situation of construction workers after the recession should be of interest to anyone working on employment, unemployment, job training or related fields in Las Vegas, since we’re talking about tens of thousands of people.
Can they be trained to fill jobs that pay as much or more than they earned filling this valley with stucco and tile cookie-cutter houses? If not, what are the implications for these workers and their families, not to mention the local economy?
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