Recruiting, retention and training in construction

The construction industry will need to attract an estimated 349,000 net new workers to keep up with demand in 2026, according to data from Associated Builders and Contractors. That number is set to rise to 456,000 in 2027, as spending growth is poised to resume.

That gap is certainly sizable, but it also represents a precipitous drop. In 2025, ABC predicted a need for 439,000 new workers. In each of the two years prior, the group foresaw the need for more than half a million fresh faces.

Failing to bring in the needed workers, “will worsen labor shortages, especially in certain occupations and regions, placing further upward pressure on labor costs,” said Anirban Basu, chief economist for ABC, in the release.

Basu tacked the shrinking labor gap in part to modest growth forecasts in construction spending for 2026 and 2027. However, he hedged that the forecasts could prove overly conservative and that demand may, in fact, be higher than indicated. 

That would likely arise if “project financing costs decline unexpectedly or if lingering policy uncertainty resolves itself quickly and favorably,” Basu said. He also noted that nonresidential specialty trade contractors have added 95,000 jobs since August 2024, “demonstrating that certain sectors of nonresidential construction hiring are going strong.”

But contractors may find themselves strapped to hire staff due to experienced workers nearing the end of their careers, as well as ongoing political and economic uncertainty, said Mike Bellaman, ABC president and CEO, in the release.

“Given current assumptions regarding prospective industry growth, a majority of new worker demand in 2026 will be attributable to retirement rather than increased demand for construction services, despite the ongoing boom in artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout,” Basu said.

Indeed, the construction industry has had an age problem for years, with the median worker closer to retirement than the total U.S. labor force at large. Nonetheless, there may be hope to shore up numbers, as Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are more likely to join construction occupations, per the National Association of Home Builders.

Meanwhile, Basu described immigration policy as a “potential wildcard for the industry’s labor force dynamics.” It remains unclear to what extent unauthorized workers have departed the U.S. construction workforce, he said, but data indicates “the flow of undocumented workers into the country fell precipitously in 2025 while voluntary deportations accelerated.”

Despite the shrinking gap, Bellaman reiterated the challenges construction employers will have finding workers, especially those with in-demand skills.

“The construction industry does not have to fall off the workforce shortage cliff,” said Bellaman. “To avoid this outcome and shore up the talent pipeline, now is the time for action—not complacency—to reaffirm that the construction industry offers careers of choice in today's complex job market.”

Every January, construction companies across the country reset their calendars, their budgets and their goals. New projects break ground. New crews come on board. New schedules promise efficiency, speed and growth.

Yet safety rarely gets the same fresh approach.

In my work investigating catastrophic construction injuries, I repeatedly hear the same defense after a worker is seriously hurt or killed: The site was OSHA compliant. Inspections passed. The boxes were checked. The paperwork was in order.

That logic is not just flawed. It is dangerous.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards were never designed to represent the highest level of safety achievable on a job site. They were designed to establish a baseline. A floor. The minimum conditions within which work can legally proceed. Treating those standards as a finish line misunderstands their purpose and puts lives at risk.

Compliance does not equal protection. OSHA cannot anticipate every site-specific hazard, every shortcut taken under deadline pressure or every cascading failure that begins with a small oversight and ends with a life-altering injury. Construction sites are dynamic environments. They change daily, sometimes hourly. Real safety requires constant reassessment, not static adherence to minimum rules.

The most serious cases I see do not stem from blatant disregard for safety. They come from a far more subtle and common problem: the assumption that if a site meets OSHA requirements, it must be safe enough. That assumption allows risk to hide in plain sight. It allows known dangers to be tolerated because they fall just outside a regulatory violation. It allows companies to confuse legality with responsibility.

The start of a new year is the right time to confront that thinking.

January can offer something construction rarely has time for during the rest of the year: a pause. A moment before momentum takes over. It is a great opportunity to ask hard questions about whether safety programs are proactive or merely “compliant,” whether training is meaningful or performative and whether risk is being managed or simply documented.

True safety cultures do not ask, “What does OSHA require?” and stop there. They ask, “What could go wrong here?” They look beyond checklists and consider how real people interact with real equipment under real pressures. They invest in planning, oversight and accountability that exceed the bare minimum because they understand the stakes.

Workers do not measure safety in citations avoided or inspections passed. They measure it in whether they go home at the end of the day. Their families measure it in whether they hear footsteps at the door that night.

OSHA compliance matters. It is essential. But it was never meant to be the ceiling.  When we are pursuing litigation due to an injury, we are not simply looking to see if an OSHA citation was issued, we are evaluating how an accident could have been prevented. Contractors need to set safety above the floor and ensure their projects are safe for everyone.

As companies set their priorities for the year ahead, the most important resolution they can make is to not only meet OSHA minimum standards, but to exceed them. Nobody wants to get operated on by a surgeon who had the lowest possible passing score on their boards and nobody should want to work at a construction site that meets the bare minimum standards for safety.  

Let’s start 2026 on the right foot safetywise. Instead of just setting the bare minimum for safety on jobsites, let’s think about what we can all do to make sure workers return home at night.

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By NCCER

Today’s construction leaders face tight timelines, tight budgets and a workforce that is hard to build and keep.

That means intentionality and consistency are musts when it comes to workforce development. Training can’t be informal, inconsistent or left to chance. Structured craft training gives crews a shared foundation so expectations are clear, performance is more reliable and job sites run safer and smoother.

New research from the National Center for Construction Education and Research reinforces what many field leaders already know. Building a safe, productive workforce doesn’t happen by accident. It requires structured, standardized craft training that reduces rework, delays, safety incidents and increases retention.

The research found measurable differences in performance between companies that invest in formal training and those that don’t. Companies that provide formal training hit labor productivity targets 65% of the time, compared to 53% for companies that do not. That gap matters because productivity isn’t just simply output. There are real implications for profitability, schedule performance and client satisfaction.

Training also reduces rework. Organizations that offer craft training reported rework rates of 19%, compared to 22% for those that do not. When every dollar counts, even minor improvements in rework reduction translate to significant savings in time and material costs. And less rework means smoother operations. Smoother operations support safer job sites.

Contractors are often forced to hire quickly, promote quickly and place people into new scopes quickly. Structured training shortens the ramp-up window and fills in gaps that present as quality issues or safety risks. More than 80% of employers surveyed reported that trained workers reach productivity six to 18 months faster than their peers who only experienced informal learning. That accelerated time-to-proficiency matters, but what matters even more is the consistency it creates. Standardized training establishes a baseline so workers enter the job site better prepared and supervisors can assign tasks with greater confidence. It also reduces the variability that can occur when skill development depends entirely on circumstances and informal coaching. 

The research also indicates training improves more than just technical skills. These workers also were reported to require less supervision, ask questions, deliver high-quality work and collaborate effectively. Clear communication and better teamwork reduce errors that can compromise safety and quality.

Training also improves reliability. Absenteeism rates were nearly 17% lower among trained workers.

Troublingly, despite the clear performance benefits, the research found that training is still inconsistent across the industry: Many craft professionals reported training happens only “as needed.” Nearly 30% said they receive no continuing technical skills training at all. That approach makes job site performance harder to control. It also makes job site risk harder to manage, because safety depends on shared standards and consistent competence.

For building talent pipelines, the research showed early-career investment through structured training, clear credentialing opportunities and visible advancement has emerged as one of the strongest indicators of employee engagement and long-term performance. How workers are trained, supported and credentialed during their first few years in the field shapes their skills and confidence, retention and sense of belonging in the industry.

Contractors can’t control every market condition, but they can control how prepared their workforce is. Informal learning cannot scale. And it doesn’t guarantee that every worker on every job site has the same foundation.

Structured, standardized training helps build safer job sites and better-performing crews by creating consistency in competence, communication and accountability. It reduces avoidable errors. It supports steadier production. And it strengthens the workforce systems contractors rely on to meet demand without compromising standards.

To learn more about the return on investment of structured craft training, download NCCER’s industry research report.

In construction, the narrative around labor most often focuses on how employers cannot find the staff to deliver projects.

In the summer of 2024, the opposite was true for Robbie Sharpe. In his case, he had more potential future construction workers than he could train.

As the building construction program director at Midlands Technical College in Columbia, South Carolina, Sharpe said he had to turn away student applicants because he had no more space to train anyone. The program educates students in cohorts by building single-family homes, then sells the structures and uses the funds for future iterations.

When representatives from the Lowe’s Foundation heard about the demand for Sharpe’s program, they penned a $1 million grant for Sharpe’s program.

That allowed him to hire a fourth full-time instructor and increase enrollment options.

“At any given semester, we can take in 48 students,” Sharpe told Construction Dive. “We used to be 24. So we doubled our capacities off of that, and it looks like it's going to grow even further.”

Midlands Technical College is one example of outreach by the Lowe’s Foundation, which in 2023 pledged to donate $50 million across five years to reach 50,000 individuals seeking careers in the skilled trades, Foundation Director Betsy Conway told Construction Dive. As of Oct. 9, 2025, the nonprofit has donated $43 million to 60 different technical schools, Conway said.

Creativity in developing programs has improved immensely, Conway said, with hands-on experiences like those Sharpe provides better preparing workers for the trade workforce.

Outreach and ambition

Part of the challenge for some trade schools is their regional footprint, especially in more rural areas, Conway said. To counteract that, the foundation has helped fund groups that provide boots-on-the-ground outreach.

“In Montana, that's a great example. You've got individuals who are really interested in being in the field, but they're hours away from their local community college,” Conway said. 

The foundation’s Gable Grants program helps support mobile unit outreach to meet potential tradesworkers where they are and start their training, as opposed to requiring every student to commute to campus.

Conway said Sharpe’s problem with a lack of space for training isn’t unique: she’s seen waitlists at every school the foundation has partnered with.

Formerly a high school teacher, Sharpe says he’s experienced the emergence of the “toolbelt generation,” as attitudes around career focus and higher education shift.

“Somewhere around seven, eight years ago, you saw this change in mindset. We had started to make some ground, breaking that stigma and that stereotype,” Sharpe said. “Now you've got a lot of these students that are like, ‘Yeah, why am I going to go spend all this money on a four year degree when the return on investment's so much better in these trade areas?’”

Commercial and residential

Though Sharpe’s students finish their certification by constructing a house, he says they’re given the tools to pursue careers in nonresidential construction as well. Currently, he estimates about 40% of the graduates end up on commercial jobsites. 

Conway confirmed that is true for the majority of the supported groups.

“They're kind of moving back and forth throughout their career,” Conway said. “It really just varies on the community where the training is happening and where the jobs are. But in most cases, the jobs are in both areas. They're able to use those transferable skills kind of back and forth.”

Even still, to better capitalize on the emerging, newly trained workforce, Conway and Sharpe suggested nonresidential builders get involved. Contributing by sitting on an advisory board, for example, can be a key way to not only contribute to the training programs, but benefit from them.

In Sharpe’s experience, home builders that participate in an advisory committee get their pick of the litter when new students graduate. 

“It is definitely advantageous for any of these contractors that are looking for employees to reach out not only to their technical colleges, but to their career centers, their high schools and ask to be a part of their advisory committee,” Sharpe said.

Architecture, engineering and construction firms reported three consecutive months of lost jobs this summer 2025 amid project delays, stalled timelines and high turnover due to an ongoing workforce shortage. Business leaders may be asking themselves, “Why can’t our firms fill critical roles?”

The answer is sobering. Today’s workforce expects more from employers: Job seekers are evaluating purpose, flexibility, advancement opportunities and alignment with their values before they’ll pursue or accept a role. Firms unable to clearly express what they stand for and what they offer to prospective employees will struggle to attract qualified talent and may even lose those individuals to competitors.

The cost of inaction

Finding and retaining the right talent is critical in an industry where reputation and relationships are directly connected to growth.

AEC firms face real consequences when workforce challenges go unaddressed. In an Aug. 28, 2025, survey by the Associated General Contractors of America, 92% of firms reported difficulty finding qualified workers, and nearly half experienced project delays due to labor shortages. These delays have ripple effects across operations and client relationships.

This challenge isn’t solved by filling open roles with anyone who will take the job. Fifty-seven percent of firms say new hires lack critical skills or credentials, per the AGC survey. Upskilling these employees takes time, budget and energy. And when new talent leaves early, it disrupts business and the cycle starts over.

These disruptions have the potential to slow progress and damage reputations built over decades, which can have long-term impact in a trust-based industry.

Employer brand matters more than ever

A company’s employer brand is its reputation as a place to work. It reflects the culture, values and experience the company offers employees. It’s built on what people inside and outside the organization believe to be true about what it’s like to work there.

Employer brands have become just as important as the projects and technical expertise a firm specializes in. Firms that articulate these benefits through a strong employer brand stand out. They draw in people who want to stay and grow with your firm and provide clear signals to those who wouldn’t be the right fit. All of this reduces time-to-hire and improves retention.

An employer brand goes hand in hand with an employee value proposition, which defines the tangible and intangible benefits an organization offers employees in return for their skills, capabilities and experience. It gives potential candidates a reason to choose a firm and current employees a reason to stay. This might include:

• Purpose and impact beyond the jobsite.
• Access to modern tools and technology.
• Career development and mentorship.
• Inclusive workplaces and strong culture.

At its core, the employee value proposition is what the organization says it offers while the employer brand is what people believe about an organization based on its reputation and their experience. Together, they support business development: Clients want to partner with firms that can deliver on time, on budget and with the right team in place.

How to activate your brand

Developing a strong employer brand and employee value proposition asks leaders to align around and commit to a clear and consistent vision for what your organization offers to prospective and current employees. The following strategies will help AEC leaders develop both.

1. Understand your people. Start with listening. Use surveys, exit interviews and focus groups to understand what employees value, where your organization’s culture is particularly strong or unique and where your organization isn’t hitting the mark. Look for patterns across teams, generations and project types. The goal is to understand what makes your culture unique and where your promise aligns (or misaligns) with the employee experience.
2. Define your authentic employee value proposition. Use these insights to create a clear value proposition rooted in your firm’s culture and strategy. Be specific. Maybe your firm gives team members experience across a wide range of projects. Maybe your culture emphasizes growth and mentorship. Avoid vague claims and focus on what your firm offers and what sets you apart.
3. Empower employee ambassadors. Your people are your best messengers. Encourage them to share their experiences at industry events, on LinkedIn and through informal networks. Equip them with stories that reflect your employee value proposition in action, whether it’s how a foreperson moved into project management, or how an eagle-eyed tradesperson flagged a key constructibility issue. This authentic storytelling from a trusted source builds credibility.
4. Evaluate and evolve. Employer brands should not be static once they’re developed. Track engagement metrics, retention trends and brand perception. Check in regularly with employees as your business evolves. Align your employee value proposition with shifts in the market, the workforce and your firm’s strategic direction. What matters to employees today may not be what matters tomorrow.

Workforce shortages aren’t going away. The AEC industry needs nearly half a million new workers in 2025 alone. Firms that build a clear, compelling employer brand and value proposition are better positioned to compete and thrive in a demanding industry.

Legislation reintroduced to Congress in September 2025 could help construction employers desperate for a reprieve from the labor shortage while also addressing immigration reform.

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up raids on jobsites, arresting unauthorized workers and preparing them for deportation, construction has seen a critical mass of its labor force impacted.

In the most high profile case, hundreds of federal agents arrested 475 workers at a construction site in Georgia on Sept. 5, 2025. Many of the workers were South Korean. At the time, White House border czar Tom Homan said President Donald Trump’s administration would continue to ramp up raids on U.S. workplaces.

An estimated 23% of construction workers are unauthorized to work in the U.S. But the reintroduced bill hopes to address that and has garnered industry support.

On Sept. 18, 2025, Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) resubmitted a bill previously put on the floor that would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Essential Workers for Economic Advancement Act would create a new visa, the H-2C visa, for nonagricultural workers.

Businesses could use H-2C visas to fill jobs that have remained open for three consecutive months or more than 60 days in a 90 day period and are located in a region where the unemployment rate is 7.9% or less. The bill puts a 65,000 job-cap on the number of positions that could qualify during the first fiscal year of H-2C visa use.

“The H-2C visa could be a practical way to bring in legal, vetted workers when jobs stay unfilled for months. It helps stabilize crews, keep projects on schedule, and still ensures American workers remain the first priority,” said John Dorer, CEO of eb3.work, a platform that connects employers with foreign nationals seeking to work legally in the U.S.

Dorer said the proposal supports workforce development in the U.S. without replacing it. As contractors invest in training and apprenticeship programs, retirements are outpacing that pipeline, he said.

“An H-2C option, with strong compliance and safety standards, could help close the gap,” Dorer said in an email to Construction Dive. “It is not the whole solution, but it can be an important part of a broader strategy that allows construction firms to grow and meet the needs of communities across the country.”

The Associated General Contractors of America is also backing the bill.  

In a statement, CEO Jeffrey Shoaf pointed to an Aug. 28, 2025, survey that found labor shortages remain the leading cause of project delays. More than nine in 10 respondents reported difficulty filling open positions. In addition, immigration crackdowns have begun to affect about one third of firms.

“Of course, the long-term solution is for Congress and the Trump administration to work together to reinvigorate our long-neglected career and technical education and training programs,” Shoaf said.

But Shoaf also acknowledged revamped career training efforts could take years.

“Establishing a visa program for construction occupations provides the kind of lawful, temporary, traceable and taxable pathway needed to serve as a short-term solution while we rebuild the domestic pipeline for preparing new construction workers,” he said.