The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey shows the construction industry registered 298,000 job openings in September, which is up by 36,000 for the month and by 92,000 from September 2025. The survey defines a job opening as any unfilled position for which an employer is actively recruiting.
Construction workers quit at a faster rate than they were laid off; the quit rate was 2.4% in September, and the layoff/discharge rate was 1.6%.
“Nearly 200,000 construction workers quit their jobs in September,” said ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu. “That’s the most in any month since the first half of 2023 and a strong indication that the industry’s labor supply is once again tightening. Unsurprisingly, contractors have responded by holding on to workers they otherwise might part with; industrywide layoffs are down by 56,000 year over year, and the layoff rate remains lower than in any month on record prior to 2020.
“Reemerging worker shortages will put upward pressure on labor costs, a dynamic that will exacerbate the effects of high borrowing costs and ongoing materials price escalation,” Basu continued. “More than in 1 in 4 contractors expect their profit margins to contract over the next six months, according to ABC’s Construction Confidence Index, and that share will likely rise if labor shortages continue to intensify into early 2027.”
