Residential Construction Employment Concentrated in Rural and Smaller-Market Counties

Residential construction employment declined by 48,800 jobs over the preceding 12 months, marking the fifteenth consecutive annual decline and the longest stretch since the Great Recession, while location quotient analysis of December 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveals that home building employment concentration is substantially higher in rural and smaller-market counties than in large metropolitan cores, with non-metro/micro counties averaging a location quotient of 1.48 and nearly three-quarters of Western state counties exceeding the national employment share.