--- title: Why's the Job Market Still Weak? Look At These 3 Charts description: Construction, which had been a major engine of job creation before the financial crisis, is now a big drag on hiring. authors: - name: Taylor Tepper url: https://money.com/author/taylor-tepper-3/ at_money_since: 2013 articles: 168 covers: - Economy and Politics - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Education - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://x.com/TaylorTepper former_staff: true published: '2014-06-17T04:01:55.000Z' modified: '2014-06-17T04:01:55.000Z' section: Economy and Politics tags: - Careers - Construction - Federal Reserve - Fred - Jobs - Macroeconomic - Recession - St. Louis Federal Reserve - The Economy word_count: 234 canonical: https://money.com/whys-the-job-market-still-weak-look-at-these-3-charts/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![construction workers](https://img.money.com/2014/06/061417_inv_construction.jpg) In May, the U.S. economy [added 217,000 jobs](http://content.money.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/empsit.pdf), a good-but-not-great showing. The construction industry, however, did little of the heavy lifting — [adding](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm) only a seasonally adjusted 6,000 positions. While construction jobs have been slowly recovering since 2011, they're still nowhere near their pre-financial crisis levels. By contrast, the broader economy has now [made up for all the jobs lost in the downturn](http://fortune.com/2014/06/06/us-jobs-may/). ![REALJOBS](https://img.money.com/2014/06/realjobs.png) Why has construction been so slow to rebuild? One big factor has been housing. There are just a lot fewer people working to build houses after, you know, the biggest housing crisis in a generation. And that's still the case even though housing has come back some. ![ycharts_chart (2)](https://img.money.com/2014/06/ycharts_chart-21.png) Another way to view construction’s struggles is to look at the total number of hours worked. In the last month of 2006, construction workers were on the clock for a seasonally adjusted 295.87 million hours. Last month, that number down at just 233.56 million hours. "Unlike the manufacturing and information sectors, the construction sector, which represents 5% of aggregate hours, had experienced a long trend prior to the Great Recession,” [writes](http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/es/14/ES_13_2014-05-19.pdf) St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank economist Carlos Garriga. ![Aggregate Weekly Hours](https://img.money.com/2014/06/aggregate-weekly-hours.png) The bottom line: The Federal Reserve will most likely continue its accommodative policy (i.e. super-low interest rates) as long as there is a lot of slack in the labor market. And thanks to the weak construction industry, there's still a lot of room for improvement. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/whys-the-job-market-still-weak-look-at-these-3-charts/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Economy and Politics", "item": "https://money.com/economy-and-politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Economy", "item": "https://money.com/economy/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Why's the Job Market Still Weak? 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