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Jobs are up. Jobs are down.  State and national numbers give differing pictures of construction employment.

State economists caution against reading too much into a couple months of job growth. And contractors caution against listening too much to economists.

“Anyone who tells you they really know what’s going on is blowing smoke at you,” said Andrew Beyer, vice president of Walsh Construction Co. “No one really knows.”

So the seeming halt to construction job losses in May that turned into ?  It’s an illusion of recovery, nothing more.

“We’re going to do a lot of bumping around the bottom for a while,” said Amy Vander Vliet, a state economist focusing on the Portland metro area.

The state’s official economic forecast shows construction employment at around 75,000 today, dropping through the first few months of 2011, when fewer than 69,000 jobs will remain. “There are probably 6,000 or more jobs to be lost in construction before it bottoms out,” said state employment economist Art Ayre.

When the recession does end, the construction sector probably won’t look like it did during boom times. When projects get started again, they’ll likely be remodels and no-frills new buildings, said Sarah Hacker, marketing director with THA Architects.

“I don’t think we’ll come out of this recession at the same place we started,” she said.

The new place will be leaner and more energy efficient, said Bart Eberwein, vice president of Hoffman Construction.

“The emphasis on cost, the emphasis on value, the emphasis on energy conservation and lack of waste throughout the construction process was percolating as the recession hit, and has been exacerbated by that,” Eberwein said. “People are really looking at how to cut all waste out of the process.”