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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Nov 14, 2007 6:41:24 GMT -6
Lumber’s price tumble axes 50,000 mill jobsNovember 13th, 2007 by Jon Lansner " If you want to see serious economic fallout from the national housing slump, look at lumber prices and wood mill job counts.
Start with price. One key wood industry benchmark, the framing lumber composite price index by the Random Lengths news service, is … • Down 18% since June. • Down 33% since start of 2006. (See the chart at right! Click on it for larger version.) • Down 45% since recent cyclical peak in May ‘04.
Shawn Church, editor at Random Lengths, told your blogger that on an inflation-adjusted basis lumber prices are at lows last seen the the early 1980s lumber industry debacle.
Low prices means less work. That 1980s slump shuttered mills across North America and cost 1-in-5 U.S. wood mill workers their job. In the past 18 months, federal job stats show 50,000 less wood-factory workers nationwide, a 9% cut. U.S. wood mills employ 517,000 as of October, the smallest workforce in 14 years.
“This has been a historical downturn that mirrors the historical downturn for housing,” Church says.
Falling lumber prices are a rare dose of good news for builders, as well as homeowners seeking to remodel. But lumber is only a modest expense in a new home. Using industry guesstimates for a typical new home, today’s cheap lumber might shave $3,000 of costs out of a construction budget for a 2,200 square-foot home...."
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Post by graybeard on Nov 14, 2007 6:49:41 GMT -6
I fear the dollar is falling faster than trees in a clear cut. Imported plywood, plumbing, hardware, etc., from Communist China will rise in price much more than domestic lumber can fall. In fact, much of our lumber comes from Canada, where there dollar is up 50% over the US dollar in the last 5 years.
GB
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