NEW YORK CITY-Gradual pickup in the economy notwithstanding, theconstruction sector hasn’t always been reaping the benefits, as atrio of new reports indicate. Locally, the New YorkBuilding Congress says the number of stalled developmentsites citywide has crept up 17% since this past February,effectively wiping out the improvements seen in this metric during2011, while accounting and advisory firm MarcumLLP, also headquartered here, sees a wide gap between theresidential and nonresidential sectors when it comes toyear-over-year construction spending nationally.

And although the Associated General Contractors ofAmerica earlier this month reported a one-month gain inemployment for the industry, the association more recently saidthat jobs in the sector were down Y-O-Y in 28 states and theDistrict of Columbia between October ‘11 and October of thisyear.

Nationally, AGC is pinning much of the blame on the threat ofsequestration. “The industry remains stuck in neutral, with closebalance each month between the number of states that add or loseconstruction jobs,” Ken Simonson, the Arlington, VA-basedassociation’s chief economist, said in a release just before theThanksgiving holiday. “Despite a strong pickup in homebuilding andmultifamily construction, uncertainty about the fiscal cliffappears to be holding back private investment, while publicagencies keep trimming construction budgets.”