Idaho’s largest homebuilder is laying off workers.
Corey Barton, president of CBH Homes in Meridian, told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview Friday that rising interest rates have forced the company to gradually downsize over the last year.
Soaring home prices and interest rate hikes have fueled the market’s downturn as fewer residents are able to afford to buy houses.
Barton said he couldn’t say how many employees have been affected by the layoffs, but said they are less than half his staff — an amount a Reddit user reported hearing.
“I’m really hurt and disappointed that we had to let people go,” Barton said. “People are important to me.”
He said the company is working on lowering costs as it builds fewer homes. Barton said many people still want to buy homes but can’t afford to.
Barton said the pandemic brought increased costs for building materials like lumber, and those prices have started to stabilize. He said he’s excited to see prices return to something more realistic.
“Our goal is to make home prices more affordable,” Barton said. “We’re lowering our prices.”
CBH is the 10th largest privately held Idaho company in the Idaho Statesman’s 2022 Idaho Private 100 list published in October. It reports having built 23,000 homes since its founding in 1992.
Could construction job cuts foreshadow recession?
A significant loss of jobs in the home-construction industry would be a possible sign of a recession that a rising number of U.S. business executives predict is coming.
The Great Recession brought a near halt to Treasure Valley home construction a decade and a half ago and led to heavy layoffs. Besides job losses, a new recession could mean pay cuts, shuttered businesses and falling family incomes in Idaho — a sharp departure from the past decade’s worth of economic growth.
A consulting firm that Idaho’s state government uses for economic projections, IHS Markit, predicted a recession for the first time in a report released by the state on Oct. 31.
“With the switch in IHS’s position, it is worth reconsidering the likelihood of a gloomy near-future for Idaho,” wrote Greg Piepmeyer, chief economist in the state Economic Analysis Bureau, in a letter accompanying IHS’s latest economic-outlook report. “Probably the most salient feature for most Idahoans is their employment status, followed closely by their income trajectory, and then inflation.”
But the latest Idaho unemployment report shows no sign of job losses, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. In fact, the report on Oct. 21 said construction employment statewide actually increased in September by 0.8% from August.
Overall job growth in Boise persisted, up 0.3% from August, the Idaho Department of Labor said.
Idaho’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate edged up to 2.8% from 2.7% in August. A year earlier, it was 3.4%.
The national unemployment rate fell to 3.5% from 3.7% in August.
Business and Local Government Editor David Staats contributed.
This story was originally published November 05, 2022 4:00 AM.
