257,000
Net new positions in all industries added in the U.S. in January as reported by the Labor Department

387,000
Multifamily housing starts in January, an increase of 7.5% over December 2014

$961.4 billion
The value of construction in 2014, which was 5.6 percent above the $910.8 billion spent in 2013

52%
Percentage of respondents to Sage Business Solutions' annual survey of the construction industry that said residential construction will be one of the top three areas of demand for work in 2015 (commercial, 59%, and health care, 27%, being the other two)

2%
Drop in construction prices in January, the sixth consecutive month that they have not gone up

• A 30.8% drop in single-family housing production in the Midwest, dragged January's U.S. total down 6.7%.

• Researchers at Freddie Mac recently reported that the professions experiencing the most job growth have homeownership rates at or below the national average; inferring that the increasing employment rate may not necessarily lead to an increase in home purchases.

• According to the Commerce Department, the economy expanded in the fourth quarter of 2014 at a 2.6% annual rate, which was less than the forecasted rate and almost half as well as third quarter growth.

• Based on the latest findings of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction unemployment increased 1.8% in January to 9.8% even as the industry added 39,000 jobs: an indication that potential workers who moved to other industries or just stopped looking are now returning to the construction job market.

''As it stands, the pullback in (consumer) confidence, along with the early-year decline in retail sales, hints of slower consumer spending growth in the first quarter,'' Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets responding to the drop in the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index from 98.1 in January to 93.6 in February.

257 metro areas added construction jobs
43 subtracted jobs
39 reported stagnant conditions

Eau Claire, Wis. (38 %)
Ogden-Clearfield, Utah (28 %)
Monroe, Mich. (25 %)
Pascagoula, Miss. (24 %)

Steubenville-Weirton, Ohio-W.Va. (-41 %)
Anniston-Oxford, Ala. (-13 %)
Bethesda-Rockville-Frederick, Md. (-12%)
Gary, Ind. (-11 %)
(Associated General Contractors of America)