该国承包商在美国相关总承包商以及Sage建设和房地产进行的最近进行的一项展望调查中对该行业的2018年前景表达了令人惊讶的乐观观点。

超过44％的受访者表示，他们预计今年对建筑服务的需求将增长，这是该协会展望系列中有史以来最高的增长。该调查收集了来自49个州和华盛顿特区的1000多家公司的回应。

The strongest expectations for growth included net increases in markets such as offices, expected to grow 22%; transportation and retail, and warehouse and lodging, up 21%; water and sewer projects, up 20%; K-12 construction, up 18%; and highway and hospitality, up 17%.

“Construction firms appear to be very optimistic about 2018 as they expect demand for all types of construction services to continue to expand,” said AGC CEO Stephen E. Sandherr, in a media call that accompanied the survey release.

受访者对其他部门的增长的乐观程度略微不那么乐观，包括多户家庭和公共建筑的16％激增，电力建设增长了13％，高等教育项目增长了11％，联邦项目增长了8％。新利18备用网址

“The real surprise in this year’s survey wasn’t the optimism, because contractors are a pretty optimistic group,” AGC spokesman Brian Turmail told ENR, “but in how optimistic they are. We think they may be looking at current workloads and expecting those to continue, but many economists, including ours here at AGC, don’t see that happening.”

桑德尔补充说：“这种乐观可能基于当前的经济状况，越来越多的商业友好的监管环境以及对特朗普政府将促进基础设施投资的期望。”

But those factors, especially infrastructure funding at the federal level, are far from certain. “Infrastructure seems to be a bigger priority for the [Trump] administration than for Congress,” Turmail says.

The outlook offered familiar results about workforce issues. Seventy-five percent of firms say they will increase head counts this year, up from 73% last year. However, half the contractor respondents reported that expansion plans will increase the size of their firms by 10% or less.

In addition, 82% of firms expect that recruiting and hiring workers will be more difficult this year. That’s up from 76% in 2017. Nearly 78% report difficulty finding qualified workers to hire, up from 73% last year.