Adrian Peralta-Alva, Senior Economist at the St. Louis Fed, gives us two charts that highlight the impact of the housing boom and bust on employment and GDP across 31 nations:

Peralta-Alva writes:

The chart on the left shows the direct effect of the changes in construction sector employment from 2008 to 2010 versus total employment for 31 different countries. The change in construction sector employ- ment is the construction sector’s proportion of 2008 employment times the percentage change in this sector’s employment from 2008 to 2010. This chart also contains a statistically fitted line that illustrates the strong relation between the two variables. The fitted line implies that declines in construction employment can directly account for about half of the observed changes in total employment.

The chart on the right shows a similar analysis for the direct effects of construction sector output declines and declines in total GDP. The statistically fitted relation between these two variables is still positive, but a little weaker as the dots do not follow the line as closely. This weaker relation may be explained, at least in part, by the fact that the share of total employment in the construction sector is considerably higher than its share in GDP.

Read Construction and the Great Recession here.