It's hard to get a handle on Hardhats in the U.S. construction industry.

Workers and job sites are here today, gone tomorrow. Injury statistics are probably greatly undercounted. And with millions of dollars being paid to workers under the table, pay rates are probably out of whack, too.

There are great challenges in attempting to organize a system that resists being counted, yet there are great benefits, too. That's why the Center to Protect Workers Rights, the research and training arm of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, issued the third edition of The Construction Chart Book late last year.

"This book uses statistics in an attempt to characterize the construction industry in the United States," the Chart Book said in its introduction. "This chart book is far from complete. It is difficult to capture the dynamic nature of the industry nationwide using only snapshots, as represented by charts."

Why should workers care about a bunch of statistics? Because good, accurate numbers help government agencies give - or take away - research dollars for health, safety and other matters that are so vital to the construction industry. Unions and contractors can better market and represent their members/employees and do a better job of lobbying.

Workers can have a greater appreciation for the dangerous line of work they find themselves in, and keep themselves updated on injury and fatality trends, as well as how they stand when it comes time to cash their paycheck.

The book uses information collected up until 2000, and the data is sometimes later than that. We don't have room for the colorful graphic charts provided by the Construction Chart Book, (they can be found at www.cpwr.com, and click on "what's new") but following are some of the highlights in text:

• Nearly 1.4 million construction workers were union members in the U.S. in 2000, accounting for 19.4% of the entire 7.2 million union and nonunion wage-and-salary workforce. Of those 1.4 million unionized construction workers, 69,000 did not pay dues to a union in 2000 - but they still enjoyed union representation at their place of work. Those workers live in the nation's 21 right-to-work states.
• Iron workers are easily the most unionized of all the crafts. The chart book reports that 70 percent of all iron workers in the nation are union.
• Michigan is consistently among the top states in terms of unionization. Our state is again listed in the top 10 states in terms of construction union density with more than 30 percent of the state's construction workers working union.
• Construction employment through 2010 is expected to rise, although not as quickly as in the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2000, wage-and-salary employment in construction grew by a 2.7% annual average, while such employment is projected to increase at an average of 1.2% between 2000 and 2010, adding 825,000 wage-and-salary jobs.
• Employment of sheet metal workers is projected to grow faster than any other trade, adding 43,400 new jobs through 2010. The other trades at the top of the list for growth (the rankings are in proportion to current workers in the trade) include 84,800 new jobs for electricians, and 106,480 jobs for construction laborers.
• For construction overall, work-related death rates remained steady from 1992-2000, while reported nonfatal injury and illness rates showed a decline. The reported rate of serious nonfatal injuries and illnesses in construction dropped 14% in the years 1996-2000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still, compared with other goods-producing industries, construction continues to have the highest rate of injuries and illnesses.
• Worker growth in construction has been most striking among the Hispanic workforce, now at 1.4 million, triple the level of two decades ago. Female employees were 9% of the U.S. construction workforce in 2000, up from 8% in 1980.
• Minority-owned construction companies totaled 264,227 in 1997, accounting for 11.5% of all construction companies. Hispanic companies had $21.9 billion in business revenues; a clumped-together minority group including Asians, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans had $12.9 billion in business income, and African-American owners had $7.7 billion in business revenues.
• Construction workers, like everyone else, are getting older. In 2000, the median age of construction workers was 37 years; in 1980, it was 34 years. For all occupations, the median age grew from 35 to 39 years old during the same period.
• Wage-and-salary employment increased markedly in construction and faster than in industries overall from 1992 to 2001. But "real" wages, adjusted for inflation, increased only slightly, starting in 1997. As of 2000, U.S. construction workers' wage and salary levels were still more than $3 per hour lower than in 1973 when inflation is taken into account.
• Pension participation among union members working in construction is much higher, at 76%, than pension participation among the nonunion workers, at 28%.
• If you've ever wondered whether U.S. construction workers have a better or worse safety record compared to other countries - keep wondering. In five industrial countries, reported work-related death rates for the construction industry in 1998 ranged from 5.2 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in Sweden to 14.2 in the U.S.
  But there are large differences in how nations keep their statistics. You can see how the fatality figures for Germany might be a bit skewed - they exclude ironworkers, electricians and sheet metal workers.
• Within construction, the fatality rate for ironworkers was six times higher than the rate for all construction occupations during the years 1997-99. There were 131 iron workers killed on the job. The fatality rate for construction laborers was roughly half as high because there are so many more laborers - but there were still more laborers than any other occupation killed on the job during that period (989).

In the U.S., when work-related death rates are compared, the entire construction industry has the fourth-highest fatality rate.