Dive Brief:
- Construction job openings continued to bounce back in December, with 292,000 unfilled positions for which employers were actively hiring, according to a Thursday release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- The industry counted 8,000 more open jobs from November, per BLS, and 87,000 more from the same period a year before. All told, 3.4% of all construction jobs went unfilled in the final month of 2025.
- Nonetheless, economic and project uncertainty has continued to dampen construction hiring, experts say.
Dive Insight:
Associated Builders and Contractors Chief Economist Anirban Basu highlighted that construction’s hiring rate bounced back from historic lows this fall as job openings rose to the highest level since July.
“This release paints a slightly more upbeat picture of the construction industry’s labor force dynamics,” Basu said in a release.
The hiring rate was 4.2% in December, which outpaced the job openings rate of 3.4%, noted Macrina Wilkins, director of market insights for the Associated General Contractors of America.
But there is not wholly a cause for celebration, experts cautioned.
“Despite this improvement, demand for construction workers remains subdued, as has been the case for several quarters. Fewer construction workers were hired in 2024 and 2025 than in any two-year period since 2015-2016,” Basu said.
Wilkins noted that the labor market remained "cautious," as layoffs edged up modestly, from 1.7% to 2.1%.
“The data point to continued workforce stability alongside gradual improvement in hiring,” she said.
Meanwhile, ABC’s analysis of BLS construction unemployment data found the overall U.S. construction unemployment rate decreased by 0.2% year over year, to 5% in December. The majority of states had lower estimated construction unemployment rates from last year. A majority also recorded lower unemployment rates than their prepandemic levels.
“The construction industry continues to contend with weaker demand from the headwinds of tariffs and supply disruptions pushing building materials prices up, increasing insurance costs and an uptick in immigration enforcement contributing to a shortage of skilled construction workers, which has added to pressure to raise wages and salaries,” Bernard Markstein, president and chief economist of Markstein Advisors, said in the release. Markstein Advisors conducted the analysis for ABC.
At the same time, ABC predicts that construction will need 350,000 net new workers to meet demand in 2026. Though that gap is sizable, it remains a reduction in the valley between workers and staffing reality from years past.
