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Bettesworth Construction
Construction industry

Construction Firms Struggle to Fill Jobs as Immigration Enforcement Affects Labor Availability

Construction firms report persistent difficulty filling craft jobs and delays from worker shortages. Some report immigration-enforcement impacts, but surveys do not identify affected workers’ legal status or isolate enforcement’s role.

By Bettesworth Construction Team 3 min read
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Construction firms report persistent difficulty filling craft jobs and project delays tied to worker shortages. Some also say immigration-enforcement activity has affected labor availability—but the available survey data do not count undocumented construction workers or establish how much enforcement contributes to the wider shortage.

What construction firms report about hiring

In a workforce survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and NCCER in July and August 2026, 88% of responding firms with craft openings said those positions were as hard or harder to fill than a year earlier. In the same survey, 42% of respondents said shortages among their own workers or subcontractors’ workers had delayed projects. The survey received responses from 1,830 people at construction firms of varied types and sizes; these are respondent reports, not a census of U.S. contractors. AGC and NCCER’s 2026 workforce survey

The results describe hiring difficulty and reported project impacts, not a verified shortage of workers with any particular immigration status. The survey release says about 29% of respondents reported at least one direct or indirect immigration-enforcement impact in the preceding six months. Specifically, 6% reported an immigration-agent visit to a jobsite or offsite location, 12% said workers left or failed to appear because of actual or rumored actions, and 16% reported subcontractors losing workers. These categories describe experiences reported by firms; they do not identify the legal status of affected workers.

What the numbers do—and do not—say about undocumented workers

“Foreign-born” and “undocumented” are not interchangeable terms. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) defines foreign-born workers to include legally admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents and undocumented immigrants. Its Current Population Survey does not separately identify those categories, so its figures cannot be used as a count of undocumented workers. BLS, Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics—2024

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BLS estimated that foreign-born workers made up 19.2% of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2024. In that year, 13.9% of foreign-born workers, compared with 7.7% of native-born workers, were employed in the broad occupational grouping of natural resources, construction and maintenance. That grouping is not a measure of construction-industry employment, and neither figure indicates how many workers were undocumented.

The available sources therefore establish neither a current nationwide count of undocumented construction workers nor a causal estimate of how much immigration enforcement explains construction hiring problems. They support a narrower conclusion: contractors report difficulty finding workers, and a portion report that enforcement-related events or concerns affected labor availability.

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Why firms say labor remains difficult to find

The survey findings point to more than one pressure, without measuring how much each contributes to hiring problems. AGC chief economist Ken Simonson said, “The need for people to work on new data centers is keeping labor conditions tight even as demand for many other types of projects remains relatively soft.” He also cited a shortage of qualified workers and immigration-policy impacts. These are his interpretations in the survey release, not separate causal estimates.

A separate AGC-Sage 2026 outlook survey found that 57% of responding firms listed insufficient workers or subcontractors as a major concern. The outlook survey was fielded from November 4 to December 15, 2025, and received 951 responses from firms across 49 states and the District of Columbia. Respondents also raised concerns about direct labor costs and worker quality. Those findings reflect contractors’ stated outlook concerns, not a measurement of the causes behind workforce shortages. AGC-Sage 2026 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook

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What remedies industry groups propose

AGC officials advocate both investment in the domestic workforce and lawful pathways for additional construction workers, including a proposed construction-specific temporary visa program. These are policy recommendations, not enacted measures or proven solutions. The surveys do not compare their likely results.

Those proposals address different parts of the problem: workforce development is intended to build skills and qualifications, while lawful work pathways would provide another route for employers to hire. Any assessment of a policy should consider how quickly it could expand available labor, whether it improves trade skills, whether it creates lawful routes to work, and whether it responds to pressures beyond immigration enforcement alone.

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AGC chief executive officer Jeffrey D. Shoaf framed the association’s position this way: “That means investing in the domestic construction workforce, creating lawful ways to supplement that workforce where needed, and maintaining the market conditions that allow contractors to keep building and hiring.” This is an advocacy statement from an industry association, not evidence that a particular proposal will resolve the reported shortages.

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