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NEW YORK Construction workers in the U.S. Northeast should see hiring pick up after years of job losses, as the region gears up efforts to rebuild after the devastation brought by Superstorm Sandy. New York City alone could gain roughly 10,000 new jobs for electricians, laborers, carpenters and others, according to an early estimate from the office of city Comptroller John Liu. It remained unclear whether post-Sandy rebuilding projects, coupled with a recent uptick in residential building, could create enough construction jobs to make up for the tens of thousands lost during the recession. The estimated 10,000 construction jobs created [...]

Getting prices from contractors for your construction project probably scares the daylights out of you and for good reason: You don’t really know what you should be paying for the work. How do you know whether the price you’re offered for your new home or remodeling project is a “good” price? How do you know whether you’re paying too much? There are no window stickers to compare Hiring a contractor isn’t at all like buying a car. By the time you get to the car dealer, you’ve already checked KBB.com, Autotrader.com, Edmunds.com and maybe a few other websites. You’ve checked [...]

BERLIN German industrial output edged down in August due to a weaker construction sector, Economy Ministry data showed on Monday, suggesting that Europe’s largest economy is weathering the euro zone crisis relatively well. Industrial production in Germany slipped by 0.5 percent on the month in August. That compared with the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of 42 economists for a 0.8 percent drop. Activity in the construction sector fell by 2.8 percent and factories churned out 1.3 percent fewer intermediate goods, dragging overall output down. Energy output, which rose by 1.5 percent, was the main bright spot. “The trend [...]

Construction spending fell 0.9% in July, missing analysts’ estimates, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $ 834 billion, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Analysts polled by MarketWatch had expected a July gain of 0.5%. Private residential construction fell 1.6%, while private nonresidential construction fell 0.9%. Public construction spending fell 0.4%. Compared with July 2011, total construction spending is up 9.3%. Construction spending rose 0.4% in June.

When evaluating the costs of building a new home, many homeowners use square-foot pricing as a basis for comparison. Let’s talk about square-foot pricing for a minute – what it is, and what it isn’t. Square-foot pricing is a method to roughly compare construction costs for two similar houses, houses in different parts of the country and houses with different characteristics. But square-foot pricing is not a reliable method for determining how much a particular design is going to cost to build. Show me a house design, and with a few specific questions, I can place it within a rough [...]