Construction job openings hit 326,000 in July, up from a revised 298,000 in June. That’s a 9.4% jump in one month and it puts the openings rate at 3.8%, the highest since August 2024.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released July JOLTS data on September 1. Twenty-three months is a long time to wait for a hiring signal, and this one arrives after a first quarter that looked genuinely bad.
Where the recovery started
The 2026 trough was January through March: 230,000 openings at 2.7%, then 201,000 at 2.4%, then 234,000 at 2.7%. February’s 2.4% was the floor. Openings have risen in five of the six months since. Year over year, July 2026’s 326,000 is up 6.9% on level from July 2025’s 305,000, and the rate is up 0.2 points.
Hires moved too: 366,000 in July against 319,000 in June, the highest monthly hires figure of 2026. So the openings aren’t just sitting on a job board.
The number that makes it a demand story
Quits held at 1.9%, up a tick from 1.8%. Layoffs and discharges held at 1.9%, flat from June and roughly flat all year in a 1.5% to 2.0% band. Quits and layoffs at the same rate is the tell.
If openings were rising because workers were churning, you’d see the quits rate climbing with them. If firms were reshuffling headcount, you’d see layoffs move. Neither happened. Contractors are adding requisitions on top of a workforce that isn’t going anywhere, which is what demand-side hiring looks like.
Two cautions. JOLTS construction estimates are volatile and revised routinely, and June was revised in this release, so treat any single month-over-month move as preliminary. And the level is still well below where this cycle started. January 2024 ran 413,000 openings at 4.8%, and by December 2024 the series had collapsed to 135,000 at 1.6%. July 2026 is a recovery off a deep floor, not a return to 2024’s peak.
Related on Exchange: a five-year occupied-building renovation like USC’s Thomas Cooper Library.
Sources: BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, September 1, 2026; ENR.