Article source: ConstructConnect

Housing & Share Price Wealth Advances

For the past year, the news has been filled with deeply distressing stories about the coronavirus contagion and sectors of the economy where jobs and earnings losses have been enormous.

Against most initial expectations, however, there’s been one underpinning of the lives of many of us (keeping our fingers crossed) that has gone mainly from strength to strength, the value of our assets. Prices for residential properties have made solid gains and stock markets have been soaring.

Several pandemic-related factors have boosted housing real estate values. (1) The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates inordinately low, stimulating demand. (2) Existing-home owners are staying put, reducing the inventory of properties offered for sale.

(3) Prospective buyers are looking for accommodations with adequate square footage to facilitate the new work-from-home trend. And (4), in some instances, government income relief checks have helped with the accumulation of down payment funding.

(more…)

U.S. total employment in February rose by +379,000 jobs, according to the latest labor market report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Prior to the pandemic, a month-to-month jump in jobs of +379,000 would have been greeted with cheers. As Graph 1 shows, however, February’s gain was a rather small blip in the grand scheme of things.

Furthermore, it barely moved the needle with respect to the jobs recovery ratio as set out in Table 1. February’s jobs claw-back ratio (i.e., relative to the huge jobs losses that occurred from February to April of last year, when the coronavirus first struck) improved only slightly, to 53.8% from 52.1% the month prior.

The gap to achieve full employment remains formidable. February’s seasonally adjusted (SA) unemployment rate shrank by a miniscule amount, to 6.2% from 6.3% in January. A year earlier, in February 2020, it had been 3.5%, which brings up an important point.

(more…)

Article source: ConstructConnect

Due to the blows to the economy last year from coronavirus impacts, undertaking mega-sized construction projects presented owners with riskier decision-making.

The number of big-dollar projects (i.e., of a billion or more each) fell dramatically, to only 11 from 70 in 2019. The number of big footprint projects (i.e., of a million square feet or more), however, stayed about even in 2020 with the year before, at 26.

In this article, we’ll look at the nature of 2020’s mega projects according to the two definitions and discuss some interesting contrasts. For example, billion-dollar projects, especially when they’re in the energy or transit fields, don’t necessarily have enclosed flooring of a million square feet.

(more…)

Article source: ConstructConnect

In mid-March of last year, the consequences of coronavirus infections stopped being hypothetical, mainly happening elsewhere, and instead became very real as they landed on our doorsteps.

Suddenly, offices were being emptied, with workers trying to set up from home. Social distancing became the new mantra, the economy went into lockdown, borders were closed, and travel ceased.

One of the sectors that suffered immediate and severe damage was the airline industry. Passenger traffic through airports took a hit to a degree never seen before.

Turning off the lights at airports leaves a huge hole in local economies. There’s a vast eco-system that begins to starve. Negatively affected are workers who handle car rentals, taxi and limo drivers, onsite retail and restaurant employees, baggage and cargo handlers, ticket agents, air traffic controllers, flight crews and numerous others working in professional and support roles.

(more…)