Union construction craft workers who settled new contracts this year got first-year raises averaging 4.9%, or $3.39 an hour in combined wages and fringes, according to the Construction Labor Research Council’s latest settlements report. The figure covers agreements negotiated from January through September 2026.
The Associated General Contractors of America published the topline Oct. 16. It’s the same 4.9% CLRC reported at midyear, and it’s a step above the 4.7% average for all of 2025. That 2025 number was itself unchanged from 2024, according to the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, a longtime CLRC partner.
What a 4.9% wage-and-fringe increase means in dollars
CLRC tracks total packages, not just base pay. Health and welfare, pension, annuity and training contributions all count. Run the two published numbers against each other and $3.39 on 4.9% implies an average package of about $69 an hour before the raise and about $72.60 after. That’s Exchange’s arithmetic, not CLRC’s, and the mix varies widely by craft and local.
The detail that matters most to estimators sits behind AGC’s member login: which crafts and regions are running hot. CLRC’s reports typically break settlements out by trade and geography. Electrical and mechanical locals near data center clusters are the obvious places to look, given that ABC’s chief economist, Anirban Basu, singled out electricians and HVAC workers as trades still short of people even as overall openings fall.
Union construction wages against a softer job market
The steadiness is the story. Construction hiring has cooled. Openings fell to 251,000 in August, and layoffs dropped to 99,000, the fewest on record, as Exchange reported in its look at the August JOLTS numbers. Contractors aren’t adding workers quickly, but they aren’t letting trained people go either. Bargaining tables reflect that. Locals have little reason to accept less when signatory contractors are holding on to crews.
Builders tell the same story from the open-shop side. NAHB’s September survey found shortages broader than during the mid-2000s boom, with starts running far lower. Wage growth at roughly 5% a year for three straight years compounds to about 15%, and that lands on top of materials. AGC also said this month that construction input costs rose 11.9% in the year through September.
What contractors should do with it
First-year increases are only part of a multi-year agreement. Many contracts carry deferred raises in years two and three, and those aren’t in the headline. A contractor bidding a 30-month job in a union market should price the scheduled steps in each local agreement it’ll work under, not a single national average.
Escalation clauses deserve a second look, too. Owners have grown used to labor rates climbing 4% to 5% a year, but a fixed-price job signed in early 2025 at the old rate leaves the contractor holding the gap. With settlements still coming in at 4.9% this late in the year, there’s no sign 2027 bargaining starts lower.