The Best Places for Construction Jobs - August 07

The best places to find a job is where employment growth exceeds the workforce growth rate. When this happens, there is less competition for jobs ... and that creates opportunities higher salaries and a faster job search.

Here are the fastest-growing metropolitan areas for Construction as of August 2007. Compare these to the United States workforce growth of 1.3% in the last 12 months, 6% in the last 5 years and 12% in the last 10 years. Each has grown faster than the workforce based on all three.

1. Tacoma, WA 8.5% 50% 88%
2. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 6.3% 6% 33%
3. Jackson, MS 6.0% 16% 21%
4. Bangor, ME 5.9% 24% 57%
5. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA 5.7% 28% 45%
6. Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA 5.3% 29% 58%
7. Oklahoma City, OK 4.9% 24% 46%
8. Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA 4.5% 17% 59%
9. Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA 4.4% 28% 21%
10. Salinas, CA 4.2% 12% 63%
11. Salem, OR 4.1% 44% 34%
12. Coeur d'Alene, ID 3.2% 68% 83%
13. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 2.1% 15% 40%
14. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 1.9% 7% 22%
15. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta, CA 1.9% 36% 51%
16. Tulsa, OK 1.8% 6% 41%
17. Birmingham-Hoover, AL 1.4% 12% 13%

These data were compiled by Mark Hovind of www.JobBait.com using Bureau of Labor Statistics through July 2007. The original data sources are available at www.bls.gov.