by Gary S. Meyers and L. Steven Platt

The word from the construction trades is all bad. Previous forecasts of a summer recovery have simply not panned out. The reason, the banks not lending and jobs continue to dry up and commercial construction projections continue to worsen.

Most building trades contractors are reporting that they have no work on the horizon and none scheduled for the balance of the construction season. There had been some talk that things would improve by August of this year, but then the banks stop doing what little lending they did earlier this year. Everything has ground to a halt.

Some trades report that they are either scaling back or closing down their apprenticeship programs for the foreseeable future.

Work hours are down 30-40% for the year from last year (2009), which was down about 30% from the year before (2008). One trade reported that even if things were to recover at the average rate of job in- creases  they experienced  throughout the 1990s, it would take until 2013 just to get back to 2007 employment levels.

Even when some of the trades, such as the cement masons, are being supported by the federal stimulus program, the outlook is bleak. The concrete contracting industry has historically been supported by private industry. Now it is being supported almost entirely by the public sector and that work is about to dry up.

Some residential construction contractors are going on their third straight year with no work. Those that were holding on for the recovery this year can hold on no longer. The unions are laying off business agents. Residential home builders are vowing to go non-union for purely economic reasons if and when they recover from this recession.

In all, the construction industry figures look bleak for the rest of the year. What this means in the broader scheme of the economic recovery remains to be seen in other sectors.