More Women in Construction

The share of women working in the construction industry has been on an upswing over the past five years, but has yet to recover its pre-recession levels.

Looking at the share of women employed in the industry since 2002, the record high was in 2006 at 1,131,000. In 2017, the most recent data available, there were 971,000, the fifth consecutive annual increase since 2012, which had a record low reading of 802,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders. "As the shortage of labor for the construction industry remains a key issue, adding new workers is an important goal of the industry. These data show that bringing additional women into the construction labor force represents a potential opportunity for the future," says NAHB senior economist Na Zhao.

Women remain underrepresented in the construction industry, although they currently make up almost half (47 percent) of the total working population. The share of women employed in construction has stayed relatively constant, around 9 percent since 2002. Women play a number of roles in the construction industry, such as administrative, professional, managerial, construction, and production occupations. We explore the state of women in the construction industry using the labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS).

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