Speaking to a crowd of over 1,100 attendees at the Annual State Construction Conference last week in Raleigh, AGC of America’s Chief Economist Ken Simonson said that the construction outlook looks solid for 2017. Simonson, who has been a keynote speaker at the conference for nearly a decade, said in his annual construction forecast that he projects overall non-residential growth of between 2-6 percent. Nationally, Simonson forecasts a 5-10 percent increase for construction involving power; 2-5 percent increase for highway and street construction; 3-7 percent increase for educationally related construction work; 8-13 percent for office; and that manufacturing construction work looked flat.
Although construction employment is growing in NC at 3%, (moderate compared to other states), labor shortages will continue to plague the industry. “We will need an arsenal of ways to deal with the workforce shortage”, Simonson said.