As residential construction employment shed a net 48,800 jobs over the past 12 months—the 15th consecutive annual decline and longest stretch of losses since the Great Recession—home building remains a major source of local jobs in many smaller markets, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Using December 2025 data and location quotients (LQ) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (an LQ greater than 1.0 means home building accounts for a larger share of the local economy than it does nationally), a new NAHB analysis found that residential construction jobs are most prevalent in rural and smaller-market counties.
Counties where residential construction outweighed its national share were led by Hawaii and Delaware, where every county topped the national mark. Average location quotients ran as high as 2.94 in Wyoming and 2.88 in Utah. Counties below the national share were concentrated in the South and Great Plains, including Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
Read the full report here.
