Key Facts

• Construction job openings rose from 206,000 in September 2025 to 298,000 in September 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).
• The U.S. now has more job openings (7.5 million) than unemployed people (7.1 million), per the BLS Employment Situation report for September 2026.
• Unemployed construction workers fell from 404,000 to 359,000 over the same year (BLS data via FRED). A year ago there were nearly two per opening. Now there are about 1.2.
• Construction workers are now quitting faster than they’re being laid off: 198,000 quits vs. 138,000 layoffs in September 2026. A year earlier, layoffs were well ahead.
• 43% of construction laborers in the U.S. are foreign-born, according to a National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) analysis of 2024 Census data.

Contractors have been saying for years that they can’t find enough people. In 2026, the federal data finally shows why so clearly that it’s hard to argue with.

Openings are climbing. The pool of available workers is shrinking. And the people already on the crew are leaving more often than they’re let go.

This article looks at the supply side of the problem: how many workers are actually out there, who is leaving and why entry-level roles are hit hardest. It also explains why the EB-3 visa is built for exactly these jobs.

For a closer look at early turnover and what contractors report in their own surveys, see our analysis of entry-level churn in construction.

The U.S. Now Has More Open Jobs Than Unemployed Workers

Start with the whole economy, because that’s the labor market contractors are competing in.

In September 2026, U.S. employers reported 7,523,000 job openings. In the same month, 7,109,000 people were unemployed.

A year earlier, the picture was reversed. There were 7,169,000 openings and 7,605,000 unemployed people.

The national unemployment rate dipped from 4.4% to 4.2% over that year.

Table 1: U.S. openings vs. unemployed workers

Measure	Sept. 2025	Sept. 2026 (preliminary)
Job openings, all industries	7,169,000	7,523,000
Unemployed people	7,605,000	7,109,000
Unemployment rate	4.4%	4.2%

When there are more openings than unemployed people, every employer is fishing in a smaller pond.

A contractor looking for a general laborer isn’t only competing with other contractors. They’re also competing with warehouses, factories, landscapers and restaurants that hire for similar entry-level, hands-on work.

And not every unemployed person is a realistic candidate. Some are looking for office work, some live far from the jobsite and some are between jobs for only a few weeks.

So the real pool of people ready to start on a construction crew next Monday is smaller than the headline number suggests.

In Construction, the Pool of Available Workers Is Shrinking Fast

The construction numbers show the same squeeze, only faster.

BLS counts an “unemployed construction worker” as someone out of work whose most recent job was in construction. It’s the closest official measure of how many experienced construction workers are available to hire.

In September 2025, there were 404,000 of them. In September 2026, there were 359,000.

Over the same year, construction job openings rose from 206,000 to 298,000.

Table 2: Unemployed construction workers vs. construction openings

Measure	Sept. 2019	Sept. 2025	Sept. 2026 (preliminary)
Unemployed construction workers	319,000	404,000	359,000
Construction job openings	n/a	206,000	298,000

A year ago, there were nearly two unemployed construction workers for every open construction job. Now the two numbers are close to even, at about 1.2 to 1.

That’s a big change in a short time. Contractors who could count on a bench of experienced workers between projects in 2025 are finding that bench much thinner in 2026.

Record-low construction unemployment

The summer numbers were even tighter.

In August 2026, the unemployment rate for recent construction workers fell to 3.1%, not seasonally adjusted. The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) called it “the lowest for any month in the 26-year history of the data.”

That month, 309,000 construction workers were unemployed.

AGC also reported that construction employment reached 8,359,000 in August 2026, up 120,000 from a year earlier. Much of that growth came from nonresidential work, which AGC’s chief economist Ken Simonson tied to “the boom in data center construction, along with advanced manufacturing and power projects.”

More projects, more openings and fewer people out of work. That’s the definition of a tight labor market.

Workers Are Leaving Faster Than They’re Being Let Go

The second part of the story is who is leaving, and how.

Construction has always had a lot of churn. Projects end, crews get laid off and workers move to the next job.

Normally, layoffs are a bigger share of that churn than quits.

In 2026, that flipped.

Table 3: Construction hiring and turnover

Measure	Sept. 2025	Aug. 2026	Sept. 2026 (preliminary)
Job openings	206,000 (2.4%)	262,000 (3.0%)	298,000 (3.4%)
Hires	337,000 (4.1%)	307,000 (3.7%)	356,000 (4.3%)
Total separations	330,000 (4.0%)	282,000 (3.4%)	359,000 (4.3%)
Quits	127,000 (1.5%)	152,000 (1.8%)	198,000 (2.4%)
Layoffs and discharges	194,000 (2.3%)	113,000 (1.3%)	138,000 (1.6%)

In September 2025, contractors laid off 194,000 workers and 127,000 quit.

In September 2026, 198,000 quit and 138,000 were laid off.

When quits outnumber layoffs, it usually means workers are confident they can find something better. That’s a sign of a strong market for workers, and a hard one for employers.

Hiring more just to stay even

Contractors did hire more in September 2026: 356,000 people, up from 337,000 a year earlier.

But total separations rose almost exactly as much, to 359,000. Employers brought in more workers and lost slightly more.

That’s the cycle many contractors describe. You fill a position, then another one opens up because someone else walked off the job.

Wages are rising to keep up

Pay is moving too.

Average hourly earnings for construction production and nonsupervisory workers rose from $37.57 in September 2025 to $39.20 in September 2026, based on BLS payroll data via FRED.

AGC reports that construction pay rose 5.0% in the year to August 2026, compared with 3.3% for private-sector production workers overall.

Rising wages help, but they also show how hard employers are competing. Every contractor raising pay to keep a crew makes it harder for the next one to hire.

Contractors Say Hiring Is Still Hard

The federal data lines up with what contractors report directly.

AGC and NCCER surveyed construction firms in July and August 2026 and received 1,830 responses. In the 2026 Workforce Survey:

• 87% of firms had open hourly craft positions.
• 88% said those jobs were as hard or harder to fill than a year earlier, including 50% who said harder.
• 42% said shortages of their own or their subcontractors’ workers had delayed projects.

Simonson summed it up: “the nation is not producing enough qualified workers.”

The Federal Reserve’s October 2026 Beige Book, which collects reports from businesses in all 12 Fed districts, found that labor supply across the economy “was generally adequate to meet demand.” It added that “shortages persisted for specialized, technical, and skilled trade workers.”

In other words, the general labor market isn’t short of people. Construction is.

The Hardest Jobs to Fill Are Entry-Level

When contractors talk about hiring, they often mean two different things: licensed tradespeople like electricians, and the entry-level crew members who do the physical work on every jobsite.

This article focuses on the second group, because they’re the largest and the easiest to train.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook describes construction laborers and helpers this way:

Table 4: Construction laborers and helpers

Measure	Figure
Jobs, 2025	1,674,400
Median pay, 2025	$22.44/hour ($46,680/year)
Typical education	No formal educational credential
Work experience required	None
Training	Short-term on-the-job training
Projected growth, 2025-35	6% (faster than average)
Projected openings per year	About 137,000

BLS projects about 137,000 openings a year for these roles over the next decade. Most will come from replacing workers who leave the job or the workforce.

These jobs don’t require prior experience. Workers learn on site.

That’s an advantage for employers, because almost anyone willing to do the work can be trained.

It also means the problem isn’t a lack of qualified candidates in the traditional sense. It’s a lack of people willing and available to take the job at all.

The Retirement Wave Is Already Here

Construction’s workforce is also getting older.

In 2025, construction employed about 12.1 million people, counting both wage earners and the self-employed, according to BLS Current Population Survey data. Of those:

• 1,989,000 were 55 to 64 years old.
• 702,000 were 65 or older.
• 222,000 were 16 to 19 years old.

The median construction worker was 42.2 years old.

Note: BLS’s 2025 annual averages exclude October, when data wasn’t collected because of the federal shutdown.

There are far more construction workers nearing retirement than teenagers entering the trade.

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) estimates the industry must attract about 349,000 net new workers in 2026 and 456,000 in 2027. ABC chief economist Anirban Basu said “a majority of new worker demand in 2026 will be attributable to retirement.”

ABC’s figure comes from its own model of construction spending and employment, so it’s an estimate rather than a count.

But it points in the same direction as the age data: even if no new projects started, contractors would still need to replace hundreds of thousands of workers.

Entry-Level Construction Already Relies on Immigrant Workers

Who fills these jobs today?

According to NAHB’s analysis of Census American Community Survey data, foreign-born workers made up 26.3% of the construction labor force in 2024, a record high.

In entry-level and hands-on trades, the share is much higher.

Table 5: Foreign-born share of construction trades, 2024

Trade	Foreign-born share
Drywall and ceiling tile installers	57%
Plasterers and stucco masons	56%
Roofers	53%
Painters	53%
Carpet, floor and tile installers	51%
Construction laborers	43%
Carpenters	35%
All construction workers	26.3%

Immigrant workers are already the backbone of many entry-level crews.

That also makes these crews sensitive to changes in immigration enforcement. In AGC’s 2026 survey, about 29% of firms said immigration enforcement had affected them in the past six months, either directly or indirectly.

• 12% had workers leave or miss work because of actual or rumored immigration actions.
• 16% said subcontractors lost workers.
• 6% had a jobsite or office visited by immigration agents.

The impact was highest in the South, where 42% of firms reported one.

For contractors, the takeaway is practical. A crew that depends on workers without stable, permanent status can shrink overnight. A crew built on workers with green cards doesn’t carry that risk.

Why the EB-3 Visa Fits Entry-Level Construction Jobs

There’s one permanent visa built for jobs like construction laborer and helper: the EB-3 visa’s Other Workers category.

The law describes these jobs almost word for word

Federal law defines Other Workers as people “capable… of performing unskilled labor, not of a temporary or seasonal nature, for which qualified workers are not available in the United States”.

Compare that with what BLS says about construction laborers: no formal education, no prior experience and short-term on-the-job training. These are entry-level jobs, and the EB-3 visa’s Other Workers category is the immigration pathway designed for them.

The process tests the same thing this data shows

Before an employer can sponsor anyone through the EB-3 visa, it has to complete PERM labor certification with the U.S. Department of Labor.

That process requires the employer to recruit locally at the prevailing wage and show that qualified U.S. workers aren’t available for the job.

In other words, the EB-3 visa doesn’t replace domestic hiring. It starts with it. The data in this article, with openings rising and the pool of available workers shrinking, describes the kind of market where local recruitment often comes up short.

EB-3 workers are permanent

EB-3 workers arrive as lawful permanent residents with green cards. They’re not on a temporary visa that expires at the end of a season or a project.

That matters for the quits problem. A contractor that trains a new laborer wants that worker to stay, learn the job and grow into a lead role.

It also matters for the enforcement risk described above. A worker with a green card has stable, legal status to work.

The tradeoffs

The EB-3 visa isn’t a fast fix, and employers should plan with that in mind.

• It’s capped. The law allows “not more than 10,000” Other Workers visas per fiscal year, for every employer in every industry combined.
• Families count against the cap. According to the Congressional Research Service, “Both principals and derivatives count against the annual numerical limits.” EB3.work CEO John Dorer has estimated that about 3,000 of the 10,000 go to workers and about 7,000 to their spouses and children (Construction Dive).
• It takes time. The wait depends on PERM processing and on the State Department’s monthly Visa Bulletin. EB3.work’s EB-3 Processing Times tool tracks current estimates.
• The job must be year-round. The EB-3 visa only covers permanent, full-time positions. Contractors whose need is seasonal or tied to a single short project should look at the H-2B program instead.

For contractors with steady, year-round demand for laborers and helpers, those tradeoffs often make sense. It’s a way to build a pipeline for 2027 and beyond, not to fill a crew next week.

Where EB3.work comes in

EB3.work works with U.S. employers to recruit and sponsor workers through the EB-3 visa, with a focus on entry-level roles. Its construction program connects U.S. contractors “with vetted international labor.”

According to EB3.work, the cost to the employer is “a flat fee of around $1,500 in total,” with “no recruiting fees.” The company partners with “a seasoned team of immigration attorneys who manage the EB-3 process from start to finish.”

The process covers each step of the EB-3 visa: the prevailing wage request, local recruitment, EB3.work’s candidate interviews, the PERM filing, the I-140 petition, the Visa Bulletin wait, and finally adjustment of status or consular processing and onboarding.

Employers can check whether they qualify with the Employer Eligibility Calculator, estimate wages with the Prevailing Wage Calculator and compare costs with the ROI Workforce Calculator.

Frequently Asked Questions

What This Means for Employers

The data points to a labor market that won’t loosen on its own. Here’s what contractors can do:

1. Track quits, not just openings. Quits now outnumber layoffs in construction. If your team is losing more people than it lets go, retention deserves as much attention as recruiting.
2. Check your pay against the market. Construction wages rose from $37.57 to $39.20 an hour in a year for production workers. If your rates haven’t moved, your competitors’ have.
3. Build training for entry-level roles. Laborer and helper jobs need no prior experience. A clear training path can widen your hiring pool to people who have never worked in construction.
4. Partner on apprenticeships for the trades. Unions and trade associations run large training networks. They’re a strong option for licensed and skilled positions.
5. Plan a permanent pipeline with the EB-3 visa. For year-round laborer and helper jobs, the EB-3 visa’s Other Workers category offers workers with green cards who can stay with your company long term. It takes time and comes with a cap, so it works best as part of a plan for 2027 and beyond, alongside domestic hiring.

The pool of available construction workers has shrunk in a year, and the workers contractors rely on most are aging out or harder to keep. Employers that plan for that now will have crews when the next project starts.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, September 2026 (released Nov. 3, 2026)
• Associated General Contractors of America, “Contractors Add 22,000 Jobs in August, Construction Unemployment Rate Hits Record Low of 3.1%,” Sept. 4, 2026
• National Association of Home Builders, Eye on Housing, “Which States and Construction Trades Depend the Most on Immigrant Workers,” April 6, 2026
• 8 U.S.C. 1153, Cornell Legal Information Institute
• Construction Dive, John Dorer op-ed on the Dignity Act and the EB-3 visa, Jan. 16, 2026
• EB3.work, EB-3 Processing Times