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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Foreign-born workers made up 35% of U.S. construction trades workers in 2024, compared with 18% of the overall labor force, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). The difference is especially pronounced in several finishing trades and varies sharply by occupation and metro area.
What share of construction workers are immigrants?
There is no single percentage that answers this without defining the workforce. JCHS counted people working in the construction industry who held skilled trade occupations: Census industry code 770 and occupation code SOC 47-2000. On that basis, foreign-born workers represented 35% of construction trades workers in 2024. JCHS excludes people not in the labor force and people living in group quarters from these estimates. Its figures are tabulations of the 2024 American Community Survey one-year estimates via IPUMS-USA.
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A broader industry measure produces a different result. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reports that immigrants made up 26.3% of the entire U.S. construction workforce in 2024, and one-third of construction trades workers. The 26.3% figure covers the construction workforce as a whole, not just skilled trades, so it should not be compared with the JCHS 35% as if both used the same denominator. The two organizations’ trade estimates also differ slightly because their analyses and categories are not identical.
Here, “foreign-born” describes nativity, not a worker’s citizenship or immigration status. The trade-specific JCHS and NAHB figures cited here do not provide a breakdown by visa, citizenship, or legal status. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) defines foreign-born people in its Current Population Survey as U.S. residents who were not citizens at birth; that group includes legally admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents, and undocumented immigrants.
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Which construction trades have the highest foreign-born shares?
JCHS’s 2024 estimates show that foreign-born workers made up more than half of workers in several installation and finishing trades. The same analysis found much lower shares in some technical and equipment-operating occupations.
| Occupation | Foreign-born share, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Drywall and ceiling tile installers | 57% |
| Plasterers | 57% |
| Roofers | 53% |
| Painters | 53% |
| Flooring installers | 51% |
| Construction laborers | 44% |
| Carpenters | 35% |
| Electricians | 16% |
| Construction equipment operators | 14% |
These are JCHS estimates for people in the construction industry and skilled trades occupations, not all workers whose jobs may touch a construction project. NAHB’s separate 2024 analysis reports 56% for plasterers and stucco masons, 51% for carpet, floor, and tile installers, and 43% for construction laborers, alongside similar shares for several other trades. Different source and occupation-category details account for small discrepancies; figures from the two analyses should not be blended.
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How has the foreign-born share changed over time?
The foreign-born share of construction trades workers rose from 30% in 2007 to 35% in 2024, according to JCHS. The total skilled-trades workforce contracted from 6.9 million workers in 2007 to 5.8 million in 2013, then recovered to 6.2 million by 2024. The foreign-born workforce had exceeded its pre-recession size by 2024, while the native-born workforce remained about 800,000 below its 2007 level.
From 2013 through 2024, immigrants accounted for all net growth in the trades workforce in the JCHS analysis. Construction laborers added 236,000 workers, a 13% increase, and that increase was entirely due to foreign-born workers. Growth among carpenters was also driven by immigrants; native-born workers accounted for more than three-quarters of gains among electricians and plumbers. Some historical occupation comparisons are affected by changes in occupation definitions.
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JCHS omits 2020 from its trend chart because of pandemic-related data quality concerns. The trend therefore shows the longer-term endpoints and recovery rather than a continuous annual series through that year.
Where are construction trades workers most likely to be foreign-born?
Geography matters: JCHS finds that the foreign-born share of trades workers exceeds their share of the overall labor force in nearly every metro area. Its 2019–2023 estimates, based on ACS five-year data and Census building permits, show the following pattern by permit volume:
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| Metro building permits, 2019–2023 | Average foreign-born share of trades workers |
|---|---|
| At least 150,000 permits | 54% |
| 75,000–149,999 permits | 40% |
| Fewer than 75,000 permits | 22% |
Among metros issuing at least 150,000 permits in that period, Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington had a 61% foreign-born share. Across the five metros with the highest remodeling expenditures, the average was 57%. These are metro-group and metro-specific estimates for 2019–2023, not national estimates or direct comparisons with the 2024 national figures.
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What do wage figures show—and what can’t they tell us?
In 2024, median wage and salary income among construction trades workers was $32,000 for foreign-born workers and $40,000 for native-born workers; the median for all trades workers was $37,000, JCHS reports. These are descriptive income figures for all workers in the study’s trades population. They do not show that nativity caused the difference, nor do they explain differences in hours worked, experience, occupation, or other factors.
What do these figures mean for the construction workforce?
The data establish that foreign-born workers are a substantial part of skilled construction trades and that their contribution to workforce growth has been particularly important since 2013. They also show that this role is uneven: shares are much higher in some finishing trades than in occupations such as electricians and equipment operators.
JCHS notes that net international migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025, and cites a Census Bureau projection of 321,000 in 2026 if current trends continue. These are Census estimates and a projection about migration overall—not counts of construction workers. If immigration declines, it could constrain growth in trades labor supply, especially in lower-wage jobs. Any resulting effects on housing production, prices, or project timelines remain risks rather than measured outcomes in these figures; construction output also depends on demand, investment, training, productivity, and other labor-market conditions.
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A separate BLS measure helps illustrate why definitions matter. In 2025, foreign-born workers were 13.3% of the broad “natural resources, construction, and maintenance” occupational group, compared with 7.9% of native-born workers. In the narrower “construction and extraction occupations” subcategory, the corresponding figures were 9.1% and 4.3%. Neither measure is the same as JCHS’s construction-industry-by-skilled-trade estimate. The BLS 2025 annual estimate is an 11-month average because October data were not collected during a federal government shutdown, so it is not strictly comparable with prior years.
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