State and Congressional District Home Building Employment in 2023

The housing industry achieved yet another record in 2023, with nearly 11.4 million individuals, including self-employed workers, employed as the number of housing units under construction reached its zenith.

NAHB’s estimation is that 4.7 million individuals were employed in residential construction, which accounted for 2.9% of the civilian labor force in the United States.

The Mountain Division, Vermont, and Florida are notable for their substantially higher percentage of local employment, with residential construction accounting for over 5% of all jobs in Idaho and Montana.

In addition, NAHB’s analysis identifies congressional districts in which home building contributes to a disproportionately high number of local jobs and employment levels.

Not surprisingly, California, the state with the highest population, is also home to the highest number of residential construction laborers.

More than 640,000 California residents were employed in the home building industry in 2023, which constituted 3.4% of the state’s employed labor force.

Quickly expanding The state of Florida ranks second with 468,000 residential construction laborers.

The state’s population has experienced one of the fastest growth rates since the pandemic began, which has unquestionably increased the demand for housing and construction workforce.

The increasing demand for residential construction laborers is further exacerbated by Florida’s substantial inventory of vacation and seasonal housing.

As a consequence, residential construction laborers constitute a relatively high 4.4% of the employed labor force in Florida.

This percentage is considerably lower than that of 2006, when Florida had the greatest percentage among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, at 6.5%, despite the fact that it is substantially higher than the national average (2.9%).

Similar to Florida, the states with the highest percentage of residential construction laborers in 2023 are those that are rapidly expanding and have a high number of seasonal, vacation homes.

5.5%, 5.1%, and 4.9% of the employed labor force are employed in home building, respectively, in Idaho, Montana, and Utah, the three states in the Mountain Division that claim the top three positions on the list. The following state on the list is Vermont, with a share of 4.6%.

As of 2023, the average congressional district has approximately 10,800 residents employed in residential construction; however, this figure is frequently considerably higher.

More than 30,000 residents of Idaho’s 1st Congressional District are employed in the home construction industry, while more than 25,000 residents of Utah’s 2nd Congressional District are employed in the home building industry.

A total of eight additional congressional districts—the 26th in Florida, the 4th in Utah, the 2nd in Idaho, the 17th in Florida, the 3rd in Arizona, the 1st in Utah, the 28th in Florida, and the 29th in California—have over 20,000 residents employed in residential construction.

By design, congressional districts are drawn to represent approximately the same number of individuals. So, in general, the presence of a significant number of residential construction (RC) workers results in a high proportion of RC workers in the labor forces of their respective districts.

This list is also topped by Idaho’s 1st, which has the greatest percentage of residential construction workers in the employed labor force (6.4%). With 6.3% of the district labor force employed in home building, Florida’s 17th district is a close second.

The following districts on the list are two from the Mountain Division: the first in Montana and the second in Utah, both with a share of 5.8%.

Florida’s 19th and 26th districts, with shares of 5.7% and 5.6%, follow respectively. Also, the 29th and 39th counties in California, which have a proportion of 5.4 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively, exceed the national average of 2.9%.

In contrast, there are numerous districts that encompass portions of large urban areas, including the District of Columbia, the 12th district of New York, which is situated in New York City, the 3rd district of Pennsylvania, which encompasses portions of the city of Philadelphia, the 5th district of Georgia, which encompasses the majority of Atlanta, and the 7th and 9th districts of Illinois, which encompass portions of Chicago.

In these urban districts, the majority of residents are employed in professional, scientific, and technical services.

With only 1,400 residents, the District of Columbia is distinguished by its low number of RC laborers. At the same time, it has an excessively high proportion of public administration employees.

The 12th District of New York and the 7th District of Illinois are home to a substantial number of finance and insurance professionals.

Concurrently, over one-third of Pennsylvanians are employed in educational and health care services in the state’s second district.

It is worth noting that the NAHB residential construction employment estimates encompass self-employed laborers.

It is especially crucial to include self-employed individuals in the home construction industry, as they have historically comprised a much larger proportion of the labor force than the total U.S. workforce.

The employment estimates for the new NAHB home building industry are limited to those who are directly employed by the industry and do not account for jobs that are created in related industries, such as furniture manufacturing, furniture design and architecture, construction materials, and landscaping.

This leads to an underestimation of the overall impact of home building on local employment.

[Read more about this story on Eyeonhousing.org]