The number of women employed in the construction industry grew significantly in 2018, increasing to 1.1 million—a total reached before the Great Recession, according to eyeonhousing.org.
Bringing more women into the construction workforce can help the industry combat its skilled labor shortage. Labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey offer a look at women in the construction industry.
During the Great Recession, the number of women in construction fell sharply by nearly 30% to 807,000 by 2010. From 2010 to 2017, the total slowly climbed to about 970,000 but remained below peak pre-recession levels. However, in 2018, 1.1 million women worked in the construction industry, which is up by 13% from 2017 and matches the number of women in the industry before the Great Recession. Overall, the share of women in construction remained relatively stable with a range of 8.9% to 9.7% since 2002; it increased to 9.9% in 2018.
According to the Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, women in the construction industry mainly are involved in occupations such as office and administrative support, management, business and financial operations. Women accounted for 73.5% of workers in sales and office occupations, including 464,000 women in office and administrative support and 26,000 in sales and related occupations in 2018. More than 350,000 women were engaged in management, professional and related occupations.
Additional workers especially are needed in construction and maintenance occupations, which account for the largest number of employees in construction, and women made up only 3% of that labor force. Groups such as production, transportation and service occupations only employed about 10,000 women.
