The average U.S. contractor is sitting on 8.8 months of work, and that number just went down. Associated Builders and Contractors reported its Construction Backlog Indicator slipped 0.3 of a month in June. The headline reads soft. The detail underneath reads like two different industries.
Contractors with data center work under contract reported 11.0 months of backlog. Everyone else reported 8.5. That gap is the whole story of the 2026 market in a single pair of numbers. The overall dip is real, but even at 8.8 months, backlog is longer than at any point between September 2023 and this past April.
A K-shaped market, in one chart
By sector, infrastructure led at 10.1 months and heavy industrial ran 9.7, while commercial and institutional sat at 8.9. The firms plugged into data centers and big industrial work are booked solid. The firms doing conventional commercial are living in a thinner, more competitive market. Scale compounds it: 41% of contractors above $100 million in revenue have data center work, versus just 8% of the smaller shops.
Confidence holds, margins wobble
ABC’s confidence readings for sales and staffing both rose in June, staying above the growth threshold. The one that slipped was profit-margin expectations, which tracks with a market where input costs like copper feeding data center loads keep climbing faster than contractors can pass them through.
The takeaway isn’t that construction is slowing. It’s that the work is concentrating. A rising share of the backlog belongs to a shrinking share of large firms building a specific kind of project. ABC’s full release with the sector breakdown is summarized here.