Construction
The share of jobs within commuting reach of a tract that are in the construction sector.
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Of all the jobs within commuting reach of a tract, the share located in NAICS sector 23. The twenty sectors together account for the whole reachable pool, so this describes the mix of work available rather than how much work there is. See Accessible jobs for how that pool is defined.
The Census Bureau defines the sector as comprising "establishments primarily engaged in the construction of buildings or engineering projects (e.g., highways and utility systems)," adding that establishments preparing sites for new construction and subdividing land for sale as building sites are also included (2022 NAICS definitions). General contractors, specialty trade contractors and heavy and civil engineering firms all fall here.
Construction employment describes the building industry a place hosts, not the amount of building happening in that place. The two diverge routinely: contractors based in one town work across an entire metropolitan area. For the volume of work being started nearby, the Permit Activity Rate measures a different thing from a different source.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
This sector carries a location caveat the Census Bureau names explicitly. A place of work in LODES is the address an employer reports in its administrative filings, and the Bureau writes that "the distinction of worksite and administrative address may be especially significant in some industries such as construction, where work is often carried out at temporary locations" (LODES Design and Methodology Report). Construction jobs therefore tend to be recorded at yards, offices and headquarters rather than at active sites.
Jobs are counted where the work is located, not where workers live, and are measured at the start of the second quarter, in early April — before the summer construction season in colder regions.
The universe is unemployment-insurance-covered wage and salary jobs. Independent tradespeople working as self-employed contractors are outside that frame.
To protect confidentiality, the Bureau infuses noise into the employer and establishment records behind these counts, using a factor that stays fixed for a worksite over time so that change across years is not distorted. Industry sector is a secondary characteristic, estimated during that protection rather than carried through directly, so a single tract's sector split is less certain than a large area's.
Alaska and Michigan have no workplace files for the two most recent data years, and Puerto Rico is not covered; tracts there carry no value.
References#
- 12022 NAICS definitionshttps://www.census.gov/naics/2022NAICS/2022_NAICS_Descriptions.xlsx
- 2LODES Design and Methodology Reporthttps://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-52.pdf