Contractor Job Openings Starting to Dry Up

The number of job openings in the construction market is starting to slow down, part of an overall trend across many key U.S. business sectors. When you look at the August construction data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on a three-month rolling average, openings decreased fractionally from 385,000 in July 2022 to 384,333 in August. While BLS doesn’t capture monthly electrical contractor job openings, they typically account for 13% of all construction employment, there are 49,963 (three-month average) job openings in the electrical construction business.

Another quick indicator to watch is the number of jobs that the nation’s largest electrical contractors post on LinkedIn. EM’s editors found 1,892 job openings posted by nine of the larger electrical contractors in EC&M magazine’s Top 50 ranking (and EMCOR,which was not in the ranking) — Quanta Services, MYR Group, Rosendin Electric, Cupertino Electric, Faith Technologies, Archkey Solutions, Power Design and Helix Electric.