2012….A World That Keeps On Pushin’ Us Around
In keeping with the yearly tradition of the Constructonomics blog I’d like to propose a theme song for 2012…..So if the theme song 
for 2011 was, “Stayin’ Alive”, I couldn’t help but try to peg 2012 with something like, “Livin’ On A Prayer”. However, I won’t. Not because we’re less than halfway there, but because this would be far too pessimistic.
While “Free Fallin'” may be a little bit of an exaggeration, I was thinking about something more like Tom Petty’s, “Won’t Back Down”, where Petty confidently boasts, “In a World that keeps on pushin’ me around, but I’ll stand my ground, and I won’t back down”. Petty suggests that even at the gates of hell, just don’t back down.
Don’t worry Tom – we won’t!
I looked all over for some positive construction industry forecasts for 2012 and well, I didn’t really find any. But why?
Everybody says how the economy is improving which may or may not be true, but the unemployment rate in the US appears to be decreasing. However, the construction employment is still tremendously stagnant. I suppose this is because construction improvement woefully lags the rest of the economy – lucky for us.
While I couldn’t find any economic info that made me want to “Whistle Dixie” (maybe next year’s theme song?), I did find a great report for construction economic data put out by the Gilbane Company. While not overly positive, this report gives a great snapshot of what is going on and what can be expected. If you’re into all the graphs and tables and things like that, you’ll love this.
It’s kinda funny that you’d think a website called Constructonomics would put a bunch of tables and graphs and stuff up as well but instead it has a bunch of touchy feely mumbo jumbo making analogies to rock songs from 1989. Go figure that one…
But before we give our Carharts to Goodwill and pawn the Hilti gun (neither of which I have ever owned), just take a deep breath and try to relax in the midst of industry-wide unemployment and underemployment. Ok?
Now, everyone just needs to realize that things will improve and while it may not be this year, it will definitely be next year. How do I know this? Well, I don’t, however, I did read something from the AIA saying that architectural billings will be up nicely this year, which means….Plus, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
But seriously, it has to. As companies hire more people they are going to need more office space to work and more hotels for travel. As consumers make more money they’ll need more retail space for shopping and bowling alleys etc. for having fun. It’s only a matter of time.
How much time? I don’t know. But until that time comes we’ll fight, claw, and scrape our way through what hopefully turns out to be the worst downturn of our careers.
And of course……We Won’t Back Down.
