NCCER on Oct. 6 released a 2026 update to “Restoring the Dignity of Work,” its 2018 study of the U.S. workforce development system, and the prescription hasn’t changed. The update carries seven policy recommendations. They’re the same seven, in the same order, that the original report set out eight years ago.
Three of them were labeled short-term in 2018, meaning achievable in under three years.
What the workforce development report recommends
According to NCCER’s announcement, the update adds new data and current market indicators and confirms the original finding that coordinated action is needed. It describes the shortage as a “long-term structural misalignment between education systems, labor market realities, and societal perceptions of work” and not a passing problem.
The seven recommendations, as listed in the release:
- Establish and strengthen career awareness and education opportunities.
- Revitalize work-based learning programs.
- Measure performance and involvement in workforce development when awarding construction contracts.
- Redefine how quality is measured in secondary education.
- Increase participation of underrepresented groups in career and technical education.
- Expand collaboration among industry, education and government.
- Balance funding between postsecondary CTE programs and higher education.
NCCER led the update with guidance from the Construction Industry Institute and members of the original research team. One caution for readers: the full 2026 report sits behind a registration form, and the announcement itself contains no new statistics. We haven’t reviewed the updated data, so what follows compares the release with the 2018 text.
The 2018 craft labor shortage forecast has come due
The original report, produced with CII’s Research Team 335, projected that 29% of the construction workforce of that time would retire by 2026 and 41% by 2031. It also estimated that fully training a craft professional takes eight to 12 years. Those were projections, and the release doesn’t say how the first one turned out.
The market gives a rough answer. Construction unemployment hit 3.1% this summer, and the Associated General Contractors of America said in September that shortages remain acute even in a soft market. The first deadline in the 2018 forecast has arrived and the pipeline didn’t get rebuilt in time.
Construction workforce policy that contractors can’t deliver alone
Look at who has to act. Three of the seven items belong squarely to legislatures and school systems: how high schools are graded, who enrolls in CTE, how postsecondary dollars are split. Federal money has started to move that way, including a $65 million community college round that puts construction first on its target list. Contractors can lobby for those changes. They can’t make them.
The third recommendation is different. Scoring bidders on workforce development is something a private owner can do on the next project without anyone’s permission, and it was on the short-term list in 2018. The release doesn’t say how many owners have adopted it. If the answer were encouraging, it would probably be in the headline.
That’s the uncomfortable reading of an unchanged list. Either the recommendations were right and the industry’s own customers haven’t acted on the one within their reach, or the list needs rethinking. NCCER’s update says the former. By the 2018 report’s math, a craft professional who started training the year it came out is only now reaching full competence at the earliest, and 41% of that year’s workforce is due to be gone five years from now.