On Aug 12, 2007, at 8:57 AM, bitch at pulpculture.org wrote:
> Exactly. so, shouldn't the question be: as the real estate bubble
> based
> economy tanks, what kind of effect will it have on the employment
> situation
> of those in industries dependent on a booming real estate market?
> Or, is
> that so negligible it won't have any sort of domino effect?
According to several Wall Street estimates, about half the growth in jobs and GDP through 2005 came from housing, directly or indirectly. (Indirectly = because of the wealth effect or the direct extraction of equity via cashout refinancings and lines of credit). Remarkably, though, while we're seeing a slowdown in retail sales lately, that's partly a reflection of the housing reversal, the decline in construction employment has been very modest so far - off only about 5% over the last year, while residential investment is off about 17%.
Doug