The headline numbers say the construction market is stable. The firms working in it know better. Beneath a flat aggregate sits a sharp split: a booming track tied to data centers, energy and public infrastructure, and a sluggish one covering offices, retail and a lot of mid-size commercial work. Same industry, two speeds, and the gap is shaping how contractors bid.
Averages are doing a lot of hiding here. Nonresidential spending held near its recent level through the spring while data center construction ran more than four times last year’s pace. A contractor reading only the top-line figure would misjudge a market that’s actually pulling apart.
What a two-speed market does to bidding
Selectivity is the response. With material costs elevated, tariffs adding uncertainty and margins thin, firms are getting choosier about which jobs they chase. The discipline shows up as walking away from underpriced commercial work and concentrating capacity where demand and pricing are strongest. For a lot of builders, that means following the data centers and the infrastructure dollars toward campuses like Meta’s Lebanon, Indiana data center.
That’s easier said than done. Hyperscale and heavy-civil work carries real barriers: bonding capacity, security clearances, specialized MEP and switchgear experience, and the balance sheet to staff a multi-year megaproject. Firms that already hold those credentials are booked solid. Firms anchored in commercial construction can’t simply pivot into a data center pipeline, so they’re fighting harder for a smaller pool of starts.
Backlog that looks better than it feels
Backlogs remain historically healthy, often eight to nine months of work in hand, but the comfort is uneven. The work is concentrated in a few large project categories, which makes the number more fragile than it reads. A firm with a deep data center backlog is in a different business than one carrying mostly tenant improvements and small commercial jobs, even if both report a solid figure.
The strategic question for 2026 isn’t whether there’s work. It’s which work, and whether a firm has the credentials to reach the part of the market that’s actually growing, a theme running through Construction Dive’s read on the year’s trends. The contractors that read the split early and repositioned are bidding from strength. The rest are discovering that a stable average is cold comfort when you’re on the slow side of it.