Contractors are short on people and unwilling to let go of the ones they’ve got. Construction had 259,000 open jobs on the last day of April, the highest tally of 2026, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released June 2. That’s a 10.6% jump from March and a 25% climb from a year earlier.
The other half of the report is just as telling. Layoffs in construction fell to a four-year low. Fewer workers were let go in April than in any month since the first half of 2022.
A Tight Labor Market That Won’t Loosen
Read together, the two numbers describe a sector that can’t hire fast enough and won’t shed the workers it already has. When openings climb and separations fall at the same time, it usually means firms see enough backlog to keep crews busy but can’t find the bodies to staff up. The skilled-trades shortage that’s dogged the industry for years is still the binding constraint, and an aging workforce keeps thinning the ranks faster than apprenticeships refill them.
The pressure isn’t spread evenly. Data center, energy and advanced-manufacturing megaprojects are pulling electricians, pipefitters and operators toward a handful of hot markets, which leaves smaller commercial and residential builders competing for whatever’s left. That mismatch shows up as project delays as often as it shows up in wage data.
What It Means for the Back Half of 2026
For the broader economy, total job openings rose to 7.6 million in April, so construction’s surge isn’t an outlier so much as a sharp version of a wider trend. The labor crunch keeps feeding into two places: schedules and costs. Exchange has documented both, from worker shortages becoming the top reason projects run late to union wage settlements landing at decade highs. Holding onto experienced crews is the smart move in a thin market, but it also locks in labor costs that are tough to walk back if demand cools. For now, builders are bracing for more work, not less.