Contractors aren’t letting people go. Construction layoffs and discharges fell to 99,000 in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Sept. 29, the fewest in any month since the series started in December 2000. Job openings fell in the same report, to 251,000 on the last day of the month.
Both numbers point the same direction once you stop reading them as opposites. Firms are holding the crews they have and posting fewer new seats.
Construction layoffs and openings, by the numbers
Openings dropped 48,000 from July, the lowest level since March, though they’re still 38,000 higher than a year ago. The openings rate landed at 2.9%. Layoffs were down 58,000 from July and 83,000 from August 2025, a 46% drop year over year, according to ENR and Construction Dive’s reads of the data. Hires fell too, to 308,000, which is 50,000 below July and 28,000 below a year earlier. Total separations came to 272,000, so hires still outran exits by about 36,000. Quits barely moved.
One revision is worth flagging. Exchange reported the first July estimate at 326,000 openings. The August release puts July at 299,000. JOLTS revises heavily and a 27,000-job swing in one month is a reminder not to plan staffing off a single print.
Why contractors are keeping crews
Associated Builders and Contractors chief economist Anirban Basu read the August data as falling demand and falling supply at the same time. “These dynamics may seem contradictory,” he said, but they fit a market where residential work is soft and data center work is booming, which leaves certain trades scarce. He expects nonresidential contractors, who on net plan to add staff over the next six months according to ABC’s confidence survey, to see faster labor cost escalation for electricians and HVAC workers in particular.
Macrina Wilkins of the Associated General Contractors of America told Construction Dive that the mix of a record-low layoff rate and a higher openings rate than last year “suggests contractors are still eager to maintain or increase their current headcounts.” Firms still have positions to fill, she said, but are struggling to match them with qualified workers.
That’s labor hoarding, and it’s rational. A contractor who lays off a journeyman electrician in a slow month may not get that person back when the next data hall breaks ground. Construction unemployment was 3.1% in August, the same record-low territory Exchange flagged in ENR’s third-quarter wage report.
What the JOLTS split means for bids
Low layoffs and fewer openings won’t show up as a headline hiring crisis. They show up in payroll. When nobody is releasing workers, the only way to staff a new job is to pull people off someone else’s, and that tends to happen through wages, per diem and overtime rather than job postings. Estimators carrying 2027 labor rates should price that in by trade, not as a single escalator, because the pressure sits in electrical and mechanical crews while residential framing slack may never reach a switchgear room.
Source data and commentary: ENR’s JOLTS report and Construction Dive.
The September JOLTS print will show whether 99,000 was a floor or just a quiet month.