WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Here’s some good employment news for one of the recession’s hardest hit groups: The jobless rate for construction workers is getting closer to pre-meltdown levels, according to government data released Friday.

Construction’s unemployment rate hit a non-seasonally adjusted 7.5% last month — the lowest result for a November since 2007 — and down from 8.6% a year earlier. The number of construction jobs last month was up 231,000 from the year-earlier period.

“Housing construction, as well as non-housing construction, has been growing,” said Robert Dietz, an economist with the National Association of Home Builders.

Part of the drop in construction’s jobless rate in recent years is due to a labor pool that started shrinking in 2007.

“Some of that workforce left the country in the downturn and either hasn’t wanted to or hasn’t be able to return,” said Jack Micenko, a housing analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group.

But recent trends look good: The past year has seen an increase in the number of employed construction workers, even as there was a decrease for the number of unemployed workers in these occupations.

Also, industries are competing for workers with construction skills.

“Builders have been losing people to the energy sector and been vocal about it…so workers are working, but it’s not completely accurate to think housing is driving that,” Micenko said.

Nonresidential projects have driven construction spending over the past year, led by manufacturing. Within home building, new construction of apartment buildings has returned to pre-crash levels, while single-family-home building is still far below bubble peak and pre-bubble levels.

“Commercial construction is recovering and that’s helping…my banks are seeing decent commercial real estate construction demand and we’ve seen multifamily starts increase and supply come online,” Micenko said.

Economists prefer to see stronger growth for single-family-home building, which creates more jobs than constructing an apartment unit. However, builders themselves are increasingly confident in the single-family-home market, with a recent gauge of their sentiment hitting close to a nine-year high.

Not all of Friday’s labor-market news was great for builders. November’s jobless rate for construction workers was higher than the overall U.S. unemployment rate. But a vibrant U.S. labor market that’s adding a healthy number of jobs is expected to firm up the housing sector and broader construction market.

“More upbeat jobs reports are a clear positive for housing demand,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist at federally controlled mortgage-finance giant Fannie Mae FNMA, -1.22%

However, he added, strong employment data are likely to move rate hikes closer.

“Recent economic data support our view that the housing recovery will broaden next year, though cross currents from expected monetary policy normalization will weigh on the sector,” Duncan said.