National Safety Month Kicks Off with Heat Safety Awareness
Join NAHB and its official safety sponsor, Builders Mutual, in recognizing June as National Safety Month, an annual observance to promote hazard awareness in residential construction and to help keep workers safe on the jobs.
The goal of National Safety Month is to increase public awareness of the leading safety and health risks and decrease the number of injuries and deaths at the jobsite, on the road, and in the home.
Each week in June will focus on a different workplace safety topic. NAHB encourages members to hold brief safety stand downs each week on the designated safety topics.
The first week’s focus is heat safety.
Heat injuries and illnesses can impose several risks, and are often overlooked because of lack of preparation. And heat safety protocols may become very important as OSHA is in the process of establishing new rules for workplace heat safety.
NAHB has published resources to help keep home builders safe in hot weather. The Heat Stress Video Toolbox Talk, also embedded below, offers best practices to avoid heat stress injuries. The Heat Stress Toolkit contains NAHB resources and information from other organizations, such as OSHA, to help keep workers safe in the heat.
Check back all June for more safety topics as we celebrate National Safety Month.
Latest from NAHBNow
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) released the NAHB Remodeling Market Index (RMI) for the third quarter, posting a reading of 62—up one point compared to the previous quarter.
For the first time since 2022, the share of new homes with two-story foyers increased, according to the Census Bureau's Survey of Construction (SOC). Despite the increase, the market share of two-story foyers has generally trended downward since 2017, with most new single-family homes being built without a two-story foyer both nationally and regionally.
Latest Economic News
Mortgage application activity declined as the 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose sharply. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Market Composite Index, a measure of total mortgage application volume, decreased 7.7% month-over-month in September on a seasonally adjusted basis. Compared to a year ago, total mortgage applications were lower by 35.4%.
Mortgage rates rose sharply in September as multiple factors applied significant upward pressure on the U.S. treasury yields. According to Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.86% in September, up nearly 20 basis points (bps) from August.
In 2025, around a quarter of new homes were built with a two-story foyer, slightly up from 2024, according to data obtained from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction (SOC) and tabulated by NAHB.