Apartment industry jobs continued strong growth in the second quarter, amounting to 38 percent of available real estate jobs in the United States, well above recent averages and an increase from 2018, according to the most recent jobs report from the National Apartment Association.
Job demand was partly due to the surge in demand for apartments during the second quarter of 2019, reaching a five-year high.
According to RealPage, net move-ins totaled 155,515 units, which outpaced the second quarter of 2018 by 11 percent, according to the NAAEI’s Apartment Jobs Snapshot.
Openings in the apartment sector comprised 38 percent of positions available in the real estate sector, well above the average of 30.1 percent.
Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington, D.C. had the highest concentration of apartment jobs during the second quarter of 2019, unchanged from last year.
Dallas performed well, leading the United States in apartment-leasing activity during the second quarter by renting more than 10,400 units, RealPage reported.
Apartment industry jobs in maintenance show strong demand
Available maintenance positions had a significant year-over-year increase, up by 2.6 percent.
Positions in maintenance were in greatest demand during the second quarter.
Maintenance technicians and maintenance supervisors landed within the top 5 job titles, comprising more than 7,500 postings combined.
Maintenance-technician and maintenance-supervisor positions experienced the highest growth in demand since 2014, increasing their share of apartment jobs by 3.5 and 1.2 percentage points, respectively.
Software skills needed
Since 2014, positions requiring skills in Yardi Software, team collaboration, and time management have notably increased.
Yardi software skills were up 7.2 percentage points. Positions requiring strong team collaboration and time management increased significantly since 2014.
National apartment association jobs report background
The NAA jobs report focuses on jobs that are being advertised in the apartment industry as being available, according to Paula Munger, Director, Industry Research and Analysis, for the National Apartment Association’s Education Institute.
“Our education institute is a credentialing body for the apartment industry. They hear often that one of the biggest problems keeping our industry leaders up at night is the difficulty in finding talent, attracting talent and retaining talent,” Munger said. “Labor-market issues are happening in a lot of industries, certainly with the tight labor market we have.”
NAA partnered with Burning Glass Technologies. “They have a labor-job posting database that is proprietary,” she said, and they can “layer on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). We looked at that and thought we could do something that is really going to help the industry and help benchmark job titles and trends as we go forward,” Munger said.
Last month’s report:
