Louisiana added construction jobs at 12.7 percent over twelve months. No other state came close on rate, and the reason is sitting on the Gulf Coast in the form of LNG trains and petrochemical work.
AGC of America published its analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics state employment data on Sept. 18, the same day the federal numbers came out. Construction employment rose in 35 states and the District of Columbia between August 2025 and August 2026. Fifteen states lost jobs.
The state-by-state spread
Ohio led on volume, adding 17,800 jobs for a 6.8 percent gain, followed by North Carolina at 17,500 (+6.3%), Texas at 17,400 (+1.9%), Louisiana at 17,200 (+12.7%) and Illinois at 13,400 (+5.6%). Note how differently Texas and Louisiana read: nearly identical job counts, and Texas’s base is so much larger that the same number is a rounding error there and a boom in Baton Rouge.
On the losing side, California shed the most at 6,900 jobs (-0.8%), then New York (-5,200), Virginia (-4,300), and Georgia and Michigan at 4,000 each. New Hampshire had the steepest percentage decline at -3.7 percent. Month over month, 31 states added and 16 states plus D.C. lost.
Separating the data from the ask
The job counts are BLS. The ranking and the 35-states framing are AGC’s arithmetic on top of BLS numbers, which is fine and standard.
The rest of the release is advocacy. Chief economist Ken Simonson attributes headwinds to what he characterizes as fast-spreading opposition to data centers, a delay in renewing federal highway funding and continuing turmoil in tariff policy. CEO Jeffrey D. Shoaf calls on policymakers to resist data center moratoriums and pass long-term surface transportation funding. Those are legislative positions from a trade association with a legislative agenda, and they’re not established by the employment data underneath them. Worth reading as what they are.
What the divergence suggests
Five states added roughly 83,000 jobs between them while the five biggest losers shed about 24,000. That’s not a national cycle, it’s a redistribution, and the states gaining are the ones with industrial megaprojects, data center clusters or Gulf energy work on the books.
The states losing are mostly expensive coastal markets where housing starts and commercial fit-out drive the payroll. Which means the headline number, construction employment up nationally, tells you almost nothing about whether your market is hiring. The state line does.
Federal work continues through the divergence. The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden revitalization in Washington reopens 31 October, with Grunley as general contractor, in a D.C. market that added jobs year over year while neighbouring Virginia lost 4,300.
Next month’s release will show whether Louisiana’s rate holds or whether the LNG pipeline has peaked.