The Covid-19 pandemic was one of the most disruptive events of the last 100-plus years, on the level of two world wars, although it did not last as long. But like the world wars of the past century, when women were enlisted to work in factories in all manner of jobs previously held by men so the men could go…
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How Commercial Office Space Vacancies are Affecting Tax Revenues
We all thought putting masks on for a few weeks would be a temporary blip, and that the scourge of Covid-19 would simply go away. Well, as we all know, it cut much deeper into the very fabric of our economy, affecting us in so many ways. First, PPP money and personal stimulus initiatives from the U.S. government fueled inflation…
Read MoreA Look at the Pressures on Our Booming Economy
As a firm, we bristle with optimism. Yes, sometimes it gets tempered when things aren’t going so well in our industry or the economy as a whole, but those setbacks tend to be short-lived. Of course, we missed the timing on what turned out to be a painfully long Great Recession, which will go down in the history books as…
Read MoreCensus population figures confirm Southern states’ momentum
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2021 national and state population estimates and components of change, the population of the United States grew in the past year by 392,665, or 0.1 percent, the lowest rate since the nation’s founding. The slow rate of growth can be attributed to decreased net international migration, decreased fertility, and increased mortality due in…
Read MoreThe Direction Of Interest Rates: I Stand Corrected
Last month, I wrote about how the Fed may start tapering the stimulus it has injected into the economy, drastically increasing liquidity against the eruption of the pandemic and the sudden recession it thrust upon the global economy, and the U.S. in particular. While the general tapering of the Fed stimulus won’t have any real impact on our daily business…
Read MorePandemic measures drive doubling of safety training outlays
Members responding to the Associated Builders and Contractors 2021 Workforce Development Survey invested $1.3 billion last year to provide craft, leadership and safety education to 500,000 course attendees, advancing their careers in commercial and industrial construction. Safety education accounted for 71 percent of the total workforce investment as per-person spending doubled, revealing an elevated focus on total human health during…
Read MoreWorkforce drug test positivity rates evidence of marijuana consumption
The Covid-19 pandemic did not dampen workforce drug testing positivity for marijuana, which continued to increase last year in the general U.S. workforce, according to a new Quest Diagnostics analysis. Based on 7 million-plus urine drug tests collected between January and December 2020, the overall rate was down only slightly in 2020, 4.4 percent, versus 2019, whose 4.5 percent level…
Read MorePANDEMIC EFFECTS SKEW UNION MEMBERSHIP RATES
Wage and salary workers who were members of unions represented 10.8 percent of the 2020 workforce, a 0.5 percent year-over-year gain, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. In construction, the union membership rate rose 0.1 point, to 12.8 percent or 1.05 million workers, over the same period.
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