Key facts

• More contractors report openings for construction laborers than for any other craft position: 525 firms in the AGC/NCCER 2026 Workforce Survey.pdf), compared with 337 for carpenters, the next most common.
• The job requires no prior work experience, only short-term on-the-job training, according to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, which counts 1.67 million laborer and helper jobs in 2025.
• 83% of contractors lost at least some new field employees within their first 90 days, and 42% say new hires fail to show up or quit shortly after starting (AGC/NCCER 2026.pdf)).
• 29% of construction firms were affected by immigration enforcement in the past six months, rising to 42% in the South (AGC, September 2026).
• Only 7% of contractors added or increased their use of employment-based visas in the past year (AGC/NCCER 2026.pdf)).

Most coverage of the construction labor shortage is about skills. Electricians, plumbers, welders, and the apprenticeships it takes to produce them dominate the conversation. That shortage is real. But it isn’t the only one, and by one measure it isn’t even the biggest.

The craft position more contractors are trying to fill than any other is the one that requires no credentials at all: the construction laborer.

This article looks at what the newest federal and industry data say about that entry-level workforce, why its problems look different from the skilled-trades gap, and what contractors can realistically do about it.

The Construction Labor Shortage Isn’t One Shortage

The 2026 Workforce Survey from the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and NCCER drew 1,830 responses in July and August 2026.

Its headline finding: 87% of firms have open hourly craft positions, and 88% of those say the jobs are as hard or harder to fill than a year ago.

Half of all respondents say available candidates aren’t qualified because they lack skills, certificates, or licenses. Read on its own, this sounds like a pure skills problem. The survey’s full results tell a more complicated story.

When AGC asked contractors which hourly positions they were struggling to fill, laborers topped the list by volume. 525 firms reported laborer openings.pdf), more than for equipment operators (345), carpenters (337), or truck drivers (258).

But laborers also had the lowest difficulty rate of any trade in the survey. Among firms with laborer openings, 51% reported difficulty filling them. Compare that with electricians, where 81% of firms with openings reported difficulty.

So the skilled trades are harder to fill per opening. Laborers are the opening more contractors have. That distinction matters, because the two problems have different causes and different fixes.

A shortage of electricians is a pipeline problem. It takes years of apprenticeship to produce one, and no amount of recruiting changes that math quickly.

A shortage of laborers is a volume and retention problem. The barrier to entry is low, so the question becomes how many people a contractor can bring in, and how many of them stay.

When industry coverage folds both into a single “skills gap,” the entry-level side of the problem largely disappears from view.

The headline difficulty figures are also worth reading against federal data. The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey counted 251,000 construction job openings in August 2026, up from 213,000 a year earlier.

Over the same period, construction hires fell from 336,000 to 308,000.

More openings and fewer hires in the same twelve months is a pattern worth watching. It suggests positions are staying open, not simply that demand is growing.

Who Construction Laborers Are

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook counts 1,674,400 construction laborer and helper jobs in 2025.

Construction laborers make up 1,489,300 of them. The rest are helpers who assist specific trades, with helpers to electricians (65,000) and to plumbers, pipefitters, and pipelayers (45,300) the largest groups.

BLS lists no required work experience for the occupation and only short-term on-the-job training.

Formal education is not typically required, though some employers prefer a high school diploma. Many require OSHA safety certification, either before or after hiring, and some require a valid driver’s license.

The work is physically demanding. BLS notes that construction laborers have one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of any occupation.

Most work full time, often outdoors in all weather. In northern climates, cold weather can limit the work to certain seasons.

The median annual wage was $46,680 in May 2025, or $22.44 an hour. That is below the $50,980 median for all U.S. occupations and well below the $59,540 median for construction and extraction occupations overall.

The lowest-paid 10% earned under $34,820, while the highest-paid 10% earned more than $76,400.

Where laborers work matters too. Specialty trade contractors employ 32% of them, and another 24% are self-employed. Building construction accounts for 17%, and heavy and civil engineering construction for 15%.

Pay also depends on who signs the paycheck. Laborers placed through temporary help services earned a median of $35,740, compared with $47,540 for those employed in building construction.

Demand isn’t going away

BLS projects employment of construction laborers and helpers to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the 3% average for all occupations.

Construction laborers specifically are projected to grow 7%, adding about 109,300 jobs.

BLS expects about 137,000 openings for laborers and helpers each year over the decade. Most will come from replacing workers who change occupations or leave the labor force, not from new positions.

That last point is the heart of the entry-level story. The bulk of the hiring need isn’t growth. It’s a replacement.

BLS attributes ongoing demand to the need to repair and replace infrastructure such as the power grid, roads, and water lines.

Not every part of the occupation is growing evenly. BLS projects demand for some helper roles to fall as prefabricated components become more common, with helpers to brickmasons and stonemasons projected to decline 12%.

Quitting Before Day 90

If most laborer openings come from replacing workers who leave, retention becomes the central variable.

The AGC/NCCER survey asked contractors directly about turnover among new field employees in their first 90 days. 83% reported at least some early turnover.pdf). Only 17% reported none.

Most of that turnover was moderate. 31% of firms lost between 1% and 5% of new field hires in the first 90 days, and 20% lost between 6% and 10%.

At the high end, 7% of firms lost between 21% and 30% of new field hires within three months, 5% lost between 31% and 50%, and 3% lost more than half.

Contractors also identified early attrition as a hiring barrier in its own right. 42% said new hires fail to show up or quit shortly after starting. That makes no-shows and early quits the second most common hiring obstacle in the survey, behind only unqualified candidates (50%).

Other barriers point to the realities of entry-level hiring:

Hiring barrier cited by contractors	Share of firms
Candidates not qualified (skills, certificates, licenses)	50%
New hires fail to show up or quit shortly after starting	42%
Candidates lack required credentials (driver’s license, work permit, clean background check)	36%
Candidates can’t pass a drug test	30%
Candidates need flexible schedules	19%
Candidates lack reliable transportation to jobsites	18%

Several of these barriers have little to do with construction skills.

Transportation, drug testing, scheduling, and work authorization are screening and logistics issues. They hit hardest in exactly the roles where no prior experience is required, because those roles draw from the broadest applicant pool.

Contractors are responding. The most common retention strategy for new field hires is a structured onboarding process, used by 52% of firms. 44% hold regular check-ins or feedback sessions, and 30% assign a mentor or buddy.

Still, 14% of firms reported having no retention strategy for new field employees at all.

If you aren’t sure how your own numbers compare, the first step is measuring them. Our guide on how to calculate your employee turnover rate walks through the calculation.

Pay is rising, but it isn’t solving the problem alone

More than eight in 10 firms report raising base pay for hourly craft and salaried workers as much as or more than they did a year earlier, according to AGC.

Among hourly craft workers specifically, 55% of firms.pdf) raised base pay by more than they did the year before. Yet 88% of firms with craft openings still say those jobs are as hard or harder to fill than a year ago.

Higher pay helps. But the survey suggests it isn’t enough on its own to close an entry-level gap driven by early churn and non-skill hiring barriers.

Immigration Enforcement and the Entry-Level Workforce

The second force reshaping the entry-level construction workforce is immigration enforcement.

In the 2026 survey, roughly 29% of contractors reported at least one direct or indirect impact from immigration enforcement in the previous six months.

The impacts took several forms:

Immigration enforcement impact (past six months)	Share of firms
Subcontractors lost workers	16%
Workers left or failed to appear due to actual or rumored immigration actions	12%
A jobsite or offsite location was visited by immigration agents	6%
Any direct or indirect impact	~29%

The subcontractor figure deserves attention. Specialty trade contractors employ the largest share of construction laborers, according to BLS. A general contractor whose own payroll is unaffected can still lose schedule when a subcontractor’s crew thins out.

The 12% figure is notable for a different reason. It captures workers who left or stopped showing up because of rumored enforcement, not only actual enforcement. In other words, uncertainty alone can remove workers from a jobsite.

The impact is uneven by region

Enforcement effects varied sharply across the country:

Region	Firms reporting at least one immigration enforcement impact
South	42%
Northeast	37%
West	22%
Midwest	17%

That makes it difficult to talk about a single national construction labor market. A Southern contractor and a Midwestern one can face very different labor conditions in the same year.

It’s also worth keeping the overall picture in proportion. 71% of firms.pdf) reported no immigration enforcement impact at all.

For most contractors, enforcement is not the main constraint. For a significant minority, concentrated in particular regions, it has become a direct source of lost workers.

The Broader Pressures: Delays, Data Centers, and a Split Market

Worker shortages have direct consequences for project delivery.

42% of contractors say shortages of their own or subcontractors’ workers delayed projects, making it the most commonly cited cause of delays. Overall, 74% reported at least one significant project delay in the past year.

At the same time, the market is not uniformly hot. 37% of firms cut headcount by at least 5% over the past 12 months, while 34% grew it by at least 5%.

The split tracks company size. Only 30% of the smallest firms (those doing $50 million or less in annual work) grew headcount by 5% or more, compared with 54% of mid-sized firms and 79% of firms doing more than $500 million a year.

Data centers are a major reason for the divergence. 28% of respondents worked on a data-center project in the past year. Among them, 58% said those projects increased competition for skilled workers, and 49% reported more wage pressure.

Even so, nearly three-quarters of all respondents expect to add employees over the next 12 months.

That combination (softer demand in parts of the market, intense demand in others, and continued plans to hire) is why the shortage persists even as some contractors shrink.

The 7%: How Contractors Are (and Aren’t) Recruiting

Given everything above, how are contractors trying to find workers?

The AGC/NCCER survey asked which recruiting methods firms added or expanded over the past 12 months:

Recruiting method added or increased (past 12 months)	Share of firms
Online strategies (social media, targeted digital advertising)	49%
Career-building programs (high school, college, CTE)	48%
Unions	24%
Staffing firms (craft)	20%
Sub- or specialty contractors	19%
Government workforce development or unemployment agencies	15%
Employment-based visas (e.g., H-1B, H-2B)	7%
No changes	13%

Domestic recruiting dominates. Nearly half of firms leaned harder on digital outreach or school partnerships. Only 7% added or expanded the use of employment-based visas.

That number should be read carefully. The survey question measured what firms added or increased over the past year, not every firm that has ever used a visa program. Some contractors may already sponsor workers and simply didn’t expand it.

Even with that caveat, visa-based hiring sits at the bottom of the list, below government workforce agencies and well below digital ads.

Part of the reason is structural. The visa programs most associated with construction are temporary. AGC itself is urging Congress to create a new construction-specific temporary work visa program, on the grounds that rebuilding domestic workforce programs will take years.

Temporary programs fit seasonal peaks. They are a weaker fit for a laborer workforce whose biggest problem, as the BLS projections show, is steady year-round replacement of people who leave.

Some employers that already rely on seasonal workers are exploring a different route: moving their best H-2B employees to permanent residence.

Others look at permanent, employer-sponsored green cards as one part of a broader long-term staffing strategy, alongside domestic recruiting rather than instead of it.

Is There Really a Construction Labor Shortage? The Counterargument

Not everyone agrees that construction faces a labor shortage.

North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), which represents more than 3 million skilled craft professionals in the U.S. and Canada, argues the opposite.

“The United States does not have a skilled craft worker shortage,” NABTU President Sean McGarvey said in May 2026. “It has a workforce planning crisis.”

NABTU says its joint labor-management system operates more than 1,600 training centers, invests over $2.5 billion a year in apprenticeship and craft training, and maintains a pipeline of more than 300,000 registered apprentices and trainees.

Its argument is that owners and contractors should plan for workforce needs at the front end of a project, the same way they plan for equipment and permits, rather than reacting once labor demand peaks.

Federal data adds another layer. The construction job openings rate was 2.9% in August 2026, below the 4.3% rate across all industries.

By that measure, construction openings are not unusually high relative to the size of its workforce.

The two views can both hold. NABTU’s argument centers on skilled craft workers in a planned, union pipeline. The entry-level laborer problem described above is driven more by early churn and non-skill hiring barriers than by a lack of training capacity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What This Means for Employers

The data points to a few practical conclusions for contractors managing an entry-level workforce.

Measure entry-level turnover separately from overall turnover. With 83% of contractors losing some new field hires in the first 90 days, company-wide turnover figures can hide where the real losses happen. Track the first 90 days as its own number.

Invest in the first three months. Structured onboarding is the most common retention tool in the survey, yet 14% of firms have no retention strategy for new field hires. Onboarding, regular check-ins, and assigned mentors directly target the no-show and early-quit problem 42% of contractors cite.

Look at the non-skill barriers. Transportation, scheduling, drug testing, and credentials each block a meaningful share of candidates. Some, like transportation to remote jobsites, are solvable with logistics rather than higher wages.

Plan workforce needs at the start of a project. With worker shortages the most-cited cause of project delays, labor deserves the same early attention as equipment and permits. NABTU makes this case directly, arguing that workforce strategy belongs at the front end of a project, not after labor demand peaks.

Watch your subcontractors’ workforce, not just your own. 16% of contractors said subcontractors lost workers to immigration enforcement. If your schedule depends on subcontracted labor, their staffing stability is part of your risk.

Consider permanent sponsorship as one option among several. For employers with steady, year-round laborer needs, employer-sponsored green cards through the EB-3 program offer a permanent workforce rather than a seasonal one. The tradeoffs are a long process timeline, upfront labor certification work, and wage requirements, so it works best alongside domestic recruiting and retention efforts, not as a replacement for them.

The construction labor shortage is usually told as a story about skills. For a large share of contractors, it is just as much a story about the workers who need no skills to start, and how many of them stay past day 90.

Sources

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, “Construction Laborers and Helpers” (last modified August 27, 2026): https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/construction-laborers-and-helpers.htm
2. Associated General Contractors of America, “Construction Workforce Shortages Remain Acute Despite ‘Soft’ Market Conditions As Data Centers Strain Labor Supply, Survey Finds” (September 3, 2026): https://www.agc.org/news/2026/09/03/construction-workforce-shortages-remain-acute-despite-soft-market-conditions-data-centers-strain
3. AGC of America and NCCER, “2026 Workforce Survey Results: National Results” (September 2026): https://www.agc.org/sites/default/files/users/user21902/2026%20AGC%20WFS%20NCCER%20(3).pdf.pdf)
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, “Table A. Job openings, hires, and total separations by industry, seasonally adjusted,” August 2026 preliminary (released September 29, 2026): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.a.htm
5. North America’s Building Trades Unions, “The U.S. Does Not Have a Skilled Craft Labor Shortage. It Has a Workforce Planning Crisis.” (May 28, 2026): https://nabtu.org/press_releases/the-u-s-does-not-have-a-skilled-craft-labor-shortage-it-has-a-workforce-planning-crisis/