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Construction employment experienced strong job growth during February while the industry unemployment rate remained at a historically low level. Residential construction employment increased by 21,900 in February and total construction employment reached 7.6 million in February, according to the National Association of Home Builder's (NAHB) Eye on Housing blog.

The number of residential construction jobs increased by 21,900 in February, following a revised increase of 22,400 jobs in January. It was the second consecutive month that monthly job growth in residential construction exceeded 20,000. Residential construction employment now stands at 3.0 million in February, broken down as 842,000 builders and 2.1 million residential specialty trade contractors. The 6-month moving average of job gains for residential construction is 10,167 a month. Over the last 12 months, home builders and remodelers added 83,400 jobs on a net basis. Since the low point following the Great Recession, residential construction has gained 986,400 positions.

In February, the unemployment rate for construction workers was little changed at 4.0% on a seasonally adjusted basis. The unemployment rate for the construction sector has been trending downwards since February 2010 and remains historically low.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia said the February jobs report "far exceeded expectations" and the job growth from January to February marks the strongest two-month start of the year since 2016. Ken Simonson, the chief economist of the Associated General Contractors of America, said the number of unemployed workers with recent construction experience and the unemployment rate of such workers were the lowest ever for February in the 21-year history of each series of data.

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