The bet was that fewer foreign-born workers on jobsites would pull more American workers into the trade. Seventeen months in, the data shows the opposite. U.S.-born employment in construction has dropped 3% over the same period that net immigration to the sector has fallen off a cliff. Both lines are going down at once. Builders are eating the difference.
A new Fortune analysis pulled together the latest enforcement data with payroll and schedule slip reporting. Roughly one million people have been removed from the broader U.S. labor force since enforcement ramped up. Net immigration into the country is on track to land at about 321,000 in 2026, down from the 1 million-plus run rate of 2023. Both figures land hardest on the trades, where foreign-born workers have historically held a disproportionate share of crew slots.
The Mobile rec center is the canonical case
Construction Dive walked through a $20 million recreation center in Mobile, Alabama where the GC lost roughly a third of its concrete crew after an ICE raid in April. The schedule slipped three weeks, costing about $84,000 in delay damages plus a per-day burn of $4,000 against the deadline. The owner ate part of it. The GC ate the rest. The replacement crews the GC eventually hired came at a 14% rate premium and started a week and a half late.
That story is not unusual. Multifamily and light commercial GCs across Texas, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida have reported similar episodes through April and May. The pattern is consistent: a raid removes a crew, no replacement is immediately available, the schedule slips two to four weeks, the rate to refill goes up 10 to 20%.
Why U.S.-born hiring isn’t compensating
The Axios summary of the underlying research is direct. In sectors where immigrants hold a large share of crew slots, U.S.-born employment is tied to immigrant labor through the demand it creates. When the immigrant share falls, the work attached to it disappears with it. That’s why the U.S.-born employment line is also down, not up. There’s less work to staff in the markets where the labor loss is sharpest, because builders are pulling back from bidding.
There’s also a recruitment gap that won’t close in 12 months. Apprenticeship programs across NABTU affiliates report flat to negative pipeline in concrete, framing, drywall and roofing trades, which are also the trades that lost the most workers. Even where pay has gone up, the upskilling clock is years long, not months.
What contractors are doing about it
Two things, mostly. First, they’re rebuilding their bid sheets to assume a 12 to 18% labor cost premium and a wider schedule tolerance. Mortenson, Skanska and Suffolk have all been quoted in trade press confirming that 2026 bids carry contingency they didn’t carry a year ago. Second, they’re pushing the H-2B and proposed H-2C programs hard. AGC and ABC have been on the Hill weekly. There’s no sign yet that either program scales fast enough to fill the gap by Q4. That fits with our earlier reporting on the H-2B doubling and the H-2C bill advancing through committee.
For owners, the message is the one nobody wants. Schedule slack and price contingency are now load-bearing line items. Reporting via Fortune’s analysis of the construction labor pipeline.