In the years following the peak of the housing market, Tucson saw half its construction jobs evaporate.
But the industry's jobs plummet appears to have hit bottom. Construction jobs in the Tucson area have been gradually increasing since January 2011, says the economic and business research center at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.
In January, the Tucson area had 16,700 construction jobs, a 14 percent increase compared with the same time period last year, the economic and business research center's numbers show. It's still a far cry from 2006, when Tucson had more than 28,000 construction jobs for several months.
"We've seen some growth recently. It has not been a lot, but we are adding some construction jobs," said Marshall Vest, a UA economist and the director of the economic and business research center.
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On the commercial side, much construction work comes from the public sector. Cities, counties and universities still have building going on, Vest said.
But the majority of jobs come from residential construction, and builders have scaled way back on that since the burst of the housing bubble.
That forced companies that focused on home construction to trim their labor force and seek new types of work to stay in business.
Some companies started branching more into commercial jobs and others began renovating existing homes.
One area where available work has increased is multifamily construction, said Jim Koedyker, of Koedyker & Kenyon Construction Inc. The company isn't working on traditional apartment complexes, Koedyker said, rather it's adding masonry and stucco to several luxury rental-home communities that have begun to spring up around Tucson.
Developers have started building the rental homes to attract buyers who've recently undergone foreclosure or have become disillusioned with home ownership. Such developments are providing jobs for companies such as Koedyker & Kenyon.
The company reported having 397 full-time-equivalent employees at the end of 2011, which is up from 210 the year before. Still, that's lower than the 635 employees the company reported having at the end of 2006.
The company anticipates adding more jobs in 2012, its Star 200 survey says.
Apart from multifamily construction, Vest said increases in construction jobs have primarily been in the specialty trades, such as plumbers and electricians. A lot of those jobs are coming from renovations needed on foreclosed houses, he said.