One thousand jobs. That’s what construction added in July, according to ADP, inside a total private-sector gain of 44,000 that was the weakest since January. It is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
And on the same morning call, ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said pay for construction workers who change jobs is at an all-time record, driven by AI-related data center demand running into a limited supply of experienced craft workers.
Both things are true, and the tension between them is the whole labor market right now.
The Premium Is Going to People Who Leave
Across all industries, median annual pay growth for job-changers accelerated to 7.0% in July, the fastest since August 2025. Job-stayers held flat at 4.4%. Construction job-stayers got 4.5%, barely above the all-industry average and below manufacturing’s 5.0%.
So the ordinary construction worker who stayed put got an ordinary raise. The leverage sits entirely with whoever is willing to walk.
Be careful with the record claim, though. ADP doesn’t publish an industry-level job-changer figure in its release tables; Richardson asserted it verbally and it can’t be checked against published data. A median computed only on people who switched jobs is also highly composition-sensitive. A modest number of high-wage electricians, pipefitters and controls technicians jumping to hyperscaler campuses will move that median without any broad wage acceleration underneath it.
What It Means for Contractors Outside the AI Orbit
If the premium is real, firms that aren’t building data centers face a retention problem they can’t buy their way out of. Their own 4.5% raises are being outbid by employers charging AI-campus margins, and that splits the craft labor market by end market and geography rather than by trade.
It’s the same two-speed pattern showing up everywhere else in the data: openings elevated, hiring flat, layoffs low, firms hoarding whoever they already have. Fewer than half of metro areas added construction jobs in the year to June. Meanwhile contractors on hyperscaler work can’t staff fast enough.
The practical consequence is that wage escalation risk now belongs in bids for long-duration work in any metro with a campus nearby, even if you’re building a hospital. Owners that locked local hiring commitments early, as Sherwin-Williams did with a project labor agreement on its new Cleveland headquarters, bought some insulation from exactly this.
Elsewhere in the report: ADP revised June private payrolls down from 98,000 to 95,000, goods-producing employment fell 3,000, natural resources and mining dropped 6,000, and manufacturing added 2,000. Education and health services led everything at 36,000.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics figures will settle whether ADP’s near-zero construction print holds. Its August 28 preliminary benchmark revision is the one to watch.