The part of our coronavirus survey looks at the affect the coronavirus pandemic has had on the workforce for contractors.
The first sign of trouble in the industry is the postponement or cancellation of jobs. When that happens, workers are sent home and their lives become more precarious. Even in these difficult times, contractors work exceptionally hard to keep on the employees and, even in good times, are reluctant to overstock. During the last few years of labor shortages, it would seem contractors would be in good position to save jobs even during a downturn.
Economic downturns hurt workers first, and the same is true with the downturn related to the coronavirus threat
We conducted the first survey from Monday, April 13 through Thursday, April 16, and 193 people responded. We broke our report into four areas:
- Demographics
- Overall attitude
- Revenue changes
- Project and employee changes
The Project and Employee Changes section is below. Follow links in the sidebar to see the other sections.
We plan to do this regularly. If you have questions or would like to provide feedback, please contact Paul Deffenbaugh, editorial director, pdeffenbaugh@moderntrade.com
Project and Employee Changes
To see project and employee changes from the March 30 survey, click here.
(Note: Click on plus sign to enlarge images.)
The left side of the chart represents the percentage of contractors who haven’t postponed any jobs and the right side indicates those who have postponed all of their jobs, with a continuum between them. Nationally, 18.7% of contractors haven’t postponed any jobs and 5.5% have postponed all of their jobs. Fifty percent of respondents nationally postponed between 1% and 50% of their jobs.
By far, the contractors in the South and Midwest have postponed the fewest percentage of their jobs. Not surprisingly, given that the East is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, contractors there have postponed the most jobs. 65% of contractors in the East have postponed more than 25% of their jobs.
When looking at the percentage of contractors who have cancelled jobs, the story is remarkably consistent across the regions. About 60% haven’t cancelled any jobs, and surprisingly those in the East who are most pessimistic in every other area of this survey, are least likely to have cancelled jobs.
Across the nation, 42.2% of contractors have laid off field staff and 26.7% have laid off office staff. Both of are slightly up from the numbers reported in our March 30 survey where 37.8% laid off field staff while 24.8% had let go of office staff.
The big surprise in this survey is the increase in layoffs in the South. Nearly 30% of contractors have laid off both office and field staff. In the March 30 survey, those same respondents presented a very different story. Only 17% laid off field and a mere 6.7% let go of office staff.
Two weeks ago, contractors reported they were very unlikely to make layoffs permanent, with 92.9% assuring the staff would be brought back. In the April 13 survey, the steam came off that confidence a bit, and 84.4% held the same attitude.
In the Midwest, the change was especially stark. In that region, the confidence fell from 93% of contractors to 68.8%. That region was most responsible for the downward drag on the national number.
In response to feedback from the first survey, we added two additional challenges to our list of problems contractors are facing: slow payments and reduced leads. In the two weeks since the last survey, contractors are reporting fewer problems with slow lead times, scheduling inspections, labor shortages, rising prices and price gouging.
In this survey, the leading issue was slow payments (64.2%), and anecdotal reports suggest that is an issue across the supply chain. Additionally and not surprisingly, just over half of contractors say the phone has stopped ringing and leads have been reduced.
