Yes—U.S. construction employers are still reporting a serious labor shortage in 2026, but the problem is more specific than a simple lack of people. Contractors report open craft and salaried positions, difficulty finding candidates with the required skills or credentials, and intense competition for workers on data-center projects. At the same time, demand is uneven by project type and region, so a firm may face a severe shortage in one trade while another local market is relatively balanced.
The latest broad indicator available here is the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and NCCER survey conducted in July and August 2026. It is a self-reported industry survey—not a census or causal experiment—and 1,830 individuals answered at least one section. The article uses the U.S. spelling “labor” when naming American sources; “labour” remains in the title.
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What the 2026 evidence actually shows
The AGC/NCCER release of September 3, 2026, found substantial openings across contractor firms:
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|---|---|---|
| Firms with hourly craft openings | 87% | Includes trades such as electricians, equipment operators, laborers and other craft roles; it does not count every vacancy in the U.S. |
| Firms with salaried openings | 82% | Shows that the pressure extends beyond field craft jobs to supervisors, managers and other salaried positions. |
| Firms with craft openings saying jobs were as hard or harder to fill than a year earlier | 88% | Among firms that had craft openings; 50% said positions were harder to fill. |
| Respondents reporting candidates lacked required skills, certificates or licenses | 50% | This is a qualification bottleneck, not proof that people are unwilling to enter construction. |
| Respondents saying shortages at their firm or subcontractors delayed projects | 42% | A reported experience, not a measured share of all national delays. |
| Respondents with at least one significant project delay in the prior year | 74% | AGC said workforce shortages were the most commonly cited cause in this survey. |
These figures describe the firms and individuals who responded. They should not be generalized automatically to every state, trade, worker or project. They do, however, show why “shortage” is a useful description of current contractor conditions: many employers have openings, and many of those openings remain difficult to fill.
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Why construction companies cannot find enough qualified workers
Openings require credentials, not just headcount
Construction work is organized around specific competencies. A position may require verified experience with a particular equipment class, a safety qualification, a state or local license, or the ability to read plans and work to a specified standard. Half of AGC/NCCER respondents said available candidates lacked skills, certificates or licenses needed for the job. That finding cautions against describing the issue as a simple shortage of interested applicants. A firm can receive applications and still have no candidate who can legally or safely perform the work on its schedule.
Demand is concentrated in particular projects and places
Labor conditions vary with the project pipeline. Among firms that performed data-center construction in the previous year, 58% said that work increased competition for skilled workers, 49% reported greater wage pressure, and 37% named worker or subcontractor availability as their biggest challenge in pursuing or delivering the work. These percentages apply only to respondents with data-center activity; they are not estimates for all construction.
Ken Simonson, AGC chief economist, summarized the uneven pattern in the September 3, 2026, release: “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.” A contractor serving a data-center boom may be competing for the same specialists as several nearby projects, while a firm focused on another segment experiences a different market.
Immigration-enforcement experiences can remove workers, but do not establish a single national cause
Roughly 29% of 2026 respondents reported at least one direct or indirect immigration-enforcement impact during the previous six months. The survey broke that out as 6% reporting an agent visit to a jobsite or offsite location, 12% saying workers left or failed to appear because of actual or rumored actions, and 16% saying subcontractors lost workers. The categories may overlap, so they must not be added together.
These are contractors’ reported experiences. The survey does not isolate how much enforcement contributed to the national labor shortage, and immigration should not be presented as its sole or proven cause. Simonson said federal policies were “impacting nearly one-third of firms,” while also pointing to the shortage of qualified workers. A responsible explanation treats enforcement effects as one pressure among several.
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Replacement hiring and the limits of the available evidence
Employers must fill new positions and replace people who leave. The sources summarized here identify replacement hiring as a contributing pressure, but they do not provide a complete, comparable national breakdown of retirements, age structure, demographics or supply by occupation. Those factors may matter, yet the available figures do not support a precise claim about their contribution. The same caution applies to any statement that assigns a national percentage of the shortage to one demographic trend.
How the shortage affects projects and businesses
Schedules slip when a crew or subcontractor is unavailable
In the AGC/NCCER survey, 42% of respondents said shortages among their own workers or subcontractors had delayed projects. Seventy-four percent reported at least one significant project delay in the prior year, and AGC identified workforce shortages as the most commonly cited cause in that survey. This does not mean every delay was caused by labor: weather, design changes, materials, permitting and financing can also disrupt a schedule. It means staffing was the leading reported cause among the choices and experiences captured by those respondents.
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AGC’s 2025 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook found that 62% of surveyed firms named rising direct labor costs as a leading business concern, 59% cited the supply of workers or subcontractors, and 56% cited worker quality. These are reported concerns for the 2025 outlook, not a national measurement of wage growth or total project-cost inflation.
When qualified people are scarce, firms may have to raise offers, pay overtime, use more expensive subcontracting arrangements or bid more cautiously. A project can also lose flexibility: the employer may accept a candidate with less experience and invest in supervision, or defer work until a qualified crew is available. The sources do not establish a single national dollar amount for these effects.
Quality and safety management become harder
Hiring under time pressure can reduce selectivity and increase the need for close supervision. In AGC’s 2025 outlook, 75% of respondents viewed inexperienced skilled labor or workforce shortage as a safety and health challenge. That is a perception reported by firms, not evidence of a measured increase in injury rates. The practical implication is to protect orientation, competency verification, task planning and stop-work authority even when a project is behind schedule.
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Practical responses: match the intervention to the bottleneck
No single program solves every labor problem. Compare each response by time to impact, local and trade coverage, credential quality, likely retention effect, cost, ability to widen the qualified workforce and fit with the employer’s project pipeline. Current surveys describe what firms are doing; they do not rank these actions by controlled return on investment.
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1. Improve total compensation, not only the hourly rate
More than eight in ten AGC/NCCER respondents said they increased base pay for hourly craft and salaried workers as much as or more than a year earlier. Pay is most useful when it is benchmarked against the local market and paired with predictable hours, benefits, travel or per-diem policies, and a credible progression path. Track whether an adjustment improves offer acceptance, first-90-day retention and hard-to-fill trade coverage. The survey reports widespread increases, but it does not prove that a particular raise produced a particular hiring result.
2. Widen recruiting channels and build entry pathways
Forty-nine percent of firms said they expanded online recruiting, and 48% increased outreach to high schools, colleges or career and technical education programs. Use different messages and screening for experienced hires, career changers, veterans, students and people entering through pre-apprenticeship routes. Measure:
- time from posting to qualified application;
- conversion from application to interview, offer and start;
- which schools or channels produce candidates for each trade; and
- retention after 30, 90 and 180 days.
Recruiting volume alone does not fix a credential gap. Job descriptions should state the license, certificate, physical requirements, travel expectations and training that the employer will provide.
3. Fund training that closes a defined skills gap
Thirty-six percent of 2026 respondents said they initiated or increased training or professional-development spending. Start with a task-level assessment: identify the work that is delaying the project, the competency required, and whether the gap is knowledge, hands-on practice, certification or supervision. Compare programs by trade coverage, instructor capacity, hands-on hours, credential recognition, cost and time to proficiency.
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ABC reported that its members invested $1.6 billion in craft, leadership, health and safety education for more than 1.3 million course attendees in 2023. Those figures describe ABC members and course attendees; they are not a count of unique workers or the whole industry. Training should supplement—not replace—site-specific orientation, competent-person requirements, local licensing and the employer’s safety system.
4. Use apprenticeships deliberately, while checking completion and relevance
ABC’s 2025 analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data estimated about 290,000 construction apprentice participants and fewer than 40,000 completers in fiscal year 2024. The figures cover registered programs and that fiscal year; they do not represent every training route. A large participant-to-completer difference signals a need to examine recruitment, accessibility, wage progression, transportation, scheduling, instruction quality and employer support. It does not by itself prove that low completion causes the national shortage.
When evaluating an apprenticeship, ask whether training is paid and work-based, whether the curriculum matches the employer’s actual projects, how completion is verified, and whether graduates remain with participating employers. ABC advocates a broad approach to workforce development; that is an organizational position, not a controlled comparison showing that one apprenticeship model is universally best.
5. Make retention and advancement an operating priority
NCCER president and CEO Boyd Worsham urged employers to focus “From recruiting and training to retention and advancement” and to make construction a first-choice career. Turn that principle into management practices: assign an experienced mentor, publish the skills and pay steps for advancement, schedule feedback, address supervisor behavior, and give workers a safe way to report problems. Measure turnover by supervisor, trade, project and tenure so that a firm can distinguish a recruiting problem from an avoidable retention problem. Worsham’s statement supports the priority; it is not a quantified estimate of its causal effect.
6. Plan work and technology around scarce capacity
AGC’s 2025 outlook described planned investment in software and mobile technology. Better coordination, estimating, documentation and field communication can reduce rework and make a limited crew more productive. The cited survey does not show that software replaces workers or resolves a shortage. Select tools for a defined bottleneck—such as handoff errors or inspection delays—then measure adoption, rework and schedule performance rather than counting purchases as outcomes.
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A practical diagnostic and 90-day action plan
- Map the constraint. List every open role by trade, project, shift, location and credential. Separate “no applicants” from “applicants not qualified” and “qualified people declining offers.”
- Protect the current schedule. Re-sequence nondependent work, confirm subcontractor staffing in writing, and identify activities that need a backup crew. Do not remove required safety or competency checks to recover time.
- Benchmark the offer. Compare base pay, overtime rules, benefits, travel, tools, training time and advancement with competing local employers. Decide which changes can be approved immediately.
- Launch two recruiting channels. Keep an experienced-hire campaign running while establishing a school, career-and-technical-education or pre-apprenticeship connection. Assign an owner and a conversion metric to each.
- Start a targeted training cohort. Choose one high-impact skill or credential, define hands-on practice and supervision, and record completion and job performance.
- Review retention monthly. Examine starts, early exits, absenteeism, safety observations and advancement by supervisor and project. Correct avoidable management causes before adding more advertising.
- Reforecast the pipeline. For each upcoming project, test whether the required trades, subcontractors and supervisors can be staffed concurrently. Price schedule risk explicitly rather than assuming labor will appear.
How to use shortage statistics responsibly
Several widely quoted numbers answer different questions. ABC projected that construction would need to attract 439,000 workers in 2025 above normal hiring. That was a model-based forecast for 2025 and is now historical; it was not a count of vacancies in 2026. Likewise, the AGC/NCCER percentages describe respondents’ experiences, while the AGC 2025 outlook describes firms’ leading concerns and plans. None is a comprehensive government vacancy series.
There is no standalone statistic in the cited sources that quantifies the causal effect of labor shortages on total U.S. construction costs or the national project pipeline. Avoid converting reported delay experiences into a national cost estimate. Use the numbers for diagnosis, attribution and planning, and state the population, field dates and denominator whenever you quote them.
What policy advocates are asking for
AGC chief executive officer Jeff Shoaf said in an August 28, 2024, release: “The most likely path to addressing construction workforce shortages is for the federal government to adopt better workforce policies,” and called for officials to support infrastructure and economic-development policies. That is AGC’s advocacy position. Employers and policymakers may debate immigration, credential portability, career education, funding and project demand, but the survey evidence does not establish that one federal measure would resolve every local trade shortage.
Conclusion: treat the shortage as a qualification, allocation and retention problem
In 2026, U.S. contractors report open positions, harder-to-fill craft jobs, credential gaps and project delays. The pressure is sharpest where demand is concentrated, including data-center construction, and it differs by region and trade. A durable response combines competitive total compensation, broader entry routes, paid and relevant training, apprenticeships judged by completion and retention, stronger supervision and advancement, and work planning that reflects actual crew capacity. Track results at the project and trade level; no available source supports a one-size-fits-all cure or a single national cause.
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