Dive Brief:
- Declining immigration threatens a key source of construction labor, according to a new research brief from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Immigrants accounted for all net growth in the trades workforce between its post-recession low in 2013 and 2024.
- Foreign-born workers made up 35% of construction trades workers in 2024, compared with 18% of the overall labor force. Their shares exceeded 50% among drywall installers, plasterers, roofers, painters and flooring installers, occupations the report identifies as physically demanding and lower-paying.
- Now, declining immigration and an aging workforce have combined to put pressure on labor demands. Nearly all growth in foreign-born trades workers since 2013 occurred among those 30 and older, while net international migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
The research highlights residential building activity in its metro analysis, but its workforce findings cover construction broadly, including commercial work. Author Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at JCHS, said the American Community Survey data does not distinguish between residential and nonresidential workers.
The report establishes a workforce baseline rather than measuring shortages or tracking workers’ movement between sectors. Its findings point to risks in the occupations and markets most dependent on immigrants.
“The trades workforce is still not where it was before the recession,” Frost said. “But the recovery that it has seen has been because of immigrants.”
The trades workforce totaled 6.2 million in 2024, still 700,000 below its pre-recession level. Foreign-born employment rose by 468,000 workers between 2013 and 2024.
U.S.-born employment has grown in higher-paying occupations such as electrical and plumbing work, Frost said. Geographic exposure also varies as immigrants accounted for about 75% of trades workers in the Miami metro, compared with roughly 6% in St. Louis.
Commercial contractors face a different mix of staffing pressures, said Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors. Data center construction has concentrated hiring in electrical and HVAC trades, while immigration restrictions have chiefly constrained less specialized occupations.
“While weaker residential activity does improve nonresidential worker availability at the margins, it will not materially help with the availability of those supply constrained occupations that are critical to data center work,” Basu said.
Basu expects a sustained immigration slowdown to push up labor costs and bids, although high borrowing costs and weaker construction demand could blunt those effects.
Contractors’ staffing difficulties already extend beyond immigration. AGC’s September workforce survey found 87% of respondents had hourly craft openings. Among those firms, 88% noted positions were as hard or harder to fill than a year earlier.
The survey also found 12% reported workers leaving or failing to appear because of actual or rumored immigration enforcement, while 16% reported subcontractors losing workers.
“Shortages of virtually any craft can delay later stages or final completion of a project,” said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America.
The JSCH report identifies another vulnerability as 76% of foreign-born trades workers under 30 had arrived within the previous decade. Reduced immigration could weaken the pipeline of younger workers as older workers leave physically demanding jobs.
“There’s going to be difficulty, I think, filling those lower wage occupations if we have a continued decline in immigration,” Frost said.
