Contractors more optimistic about 2011
Charlotte Business Journal
Date: Thursday, December 30, 2010, 10:33am ESTA survey by the Carolinas chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America finds contractors are optimistic about the coming year. The Charlotte-based group’s third-quarter “construction barometer” inched up 1 percent from the same period last year.
Contractors are seeing improved business conditions and greater demand for skilled labor throughout the Carolinas.
Still, challenges remain, the organization reports. While material prices remain low, there’s concern that those prices will climb. Federal stimulus dollars, which funded much recent construction, have been spent and many government bodies are projecting huge budget deficits, which should damper public projects. And financing for commercial work remains difficult to obtain, despite low interest rates.
In the Piedmont region of North Carolina, contractors predict rising demand for labor. The labor and employment section of the AGC barometer jumped 10.9 percent during the quarter, an indication of higher labor costs.
That marked the first back-to-back quarterly increases in labor costs in two years. But the AGC warns no clear trend has emerged to indicate the industry is on its way out of recession.
