Immigrant workers have powered the recovery of the U.S. construction trades since the recession, and the workforce remains smaller than it was before the downturn. That dependence now meets a second pressure: fewer new arrivals and an aging labor pool, particularly in physically demanding, lower-paying occupations. The figures describe construction broadly, but they point to a staffing problem that could look different from one trade and market to the next.
Immigrants account for workforce growth
A Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies research brief finds that foreign-born workers accounted for all net growth in construction trades employment between 2013 and 2024. Their ranks rose by 468,000 over that period. The trades workforce reached 6.2 million in 2024, still 700,000 below its pre-recession level. Those figures show both a recovery and its limit: the industry added workers, but it did not regain the earlier scale of its trades workforce.
Foreign-born workers made up 35% of trades workers in 2024, nearly double their 18% share of the overall labor force. They represented more than half of workers in drywall installation, plastering, roofing, painting and flooring. The report describes these as physically demanding occupations that tend to pay less, a combination that can make recruitment and retention difficult even before the effects of migration slowdowns are considered.
“The trades workforce is still not where it was before the recession,” said Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at the center. “But the recovery that it has seen has been because of immigrants.” His account makes the dependence plain. If you're working in this space, the central question isn't simply how many workers the industry has today; it's whether enough people are entering the occupations where employers have relied most heavily on immigrant labor.
The workforce data covers construction as a whole, including commercial work. Frost said American Community Survey data doesn’t separate residential from nonresidential workers, so the brief sets a broad baseline rather than measuring shortages or tracking workers shifting between sectors. That limitation matters: the figures establish who contributed to workforce growth, but they can't show precisely where a shortfall is emerging or which projects will feel it first.
Exposure varies by trade and market
Immigrant reliance differs sharply by location: foreign-born workers account for about 75% of trades workers in the Miami metro area, compared with roughly 6% in St. Louis. Those shares caution against treating the national average as a description of any one local labor market. A change in immigration flows could have a more visible effect in places where immigrant workers make up a larger share of the trades workforce.
U.S.-born employment has grown in higher-paying fields such as electrical and plumbing work, Frost said, while immigrant shares are highest in several lower-paid trades. The distinction helps explain why a headline about construction labor can conceal different pressures: the availability of workers in one occupation doesn't automatically solve a shortage in another. And this is the part most people overlook: a broad increase in construction employment doesn't necessarily put the right skills in the right place.
That distinction matters for commercial builders facing concentrated demand for electrical and HVAC workers on data center projects. Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors, said immigration restrictions have mainly constrained less specialized occupations, while the trades most in demand for data centers already face tight supply. His point is that immigration and project demand don't map neatly onto one another; the occupations most exposed to immigration changes may not be the same ones driving high-profile commercial construction.
“While weaker residential activity does improve nonresidential worker availability at the margins, it will not materially help with the availability of those supply constrained occupations that are critical to data center work,” Basu said. Here's the thing: workers may move between parts of the industry, but a softer housing market alone can't be assumed to resolve a shortage in specialized trades.
Basu expects a prolonged immigration slowdown to add pressure to labor costs and bids. High borrowing costs and softer construction demand could temper that effect. The outcome, then, depends on forces pushing in different directions: fewer available workers can raise costs, while less building activity can reduce competition for labor.
Aging workers and fewer new arrivals tighten the pipeline
The age profile adds to the concern. Nearly all growth in foreign-born trades employment since 2013 came from workers aged 30 and older. Among foreign-born trades workers under 30, 76% had arrived in the previous decade. Net international migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025, according to the research brief. Together, these findings suggest that the recent growth in the immigrant trades workforce has not been matched by a similarly large younger cohort already working in the field.
That leaves fewer recent arrivals entering a workforce where older workers may leave physically demanding jobs. The figures don't establish how quickly workers will exit, or how many new arrivals will choose construction, but they point to a pipeline that may be harder to replenish. “There’s going to be difficulty, I think, filling those lower wage occupations if we have a continued decline in immigration,” Frost said. A thinner pipeline. That’s the underlying concern.
Contractor surveys point to existing hiring strain. An Associated General Contractors of America survey in September found that 87% of respondents had hourly craft openings; among those firms, 88% said the positions were as hard or harder to fill than a year earlier. Twelve percent reported workers leaving or not showing up because of actual or rumored immigration enforcement, and 16% said subcontractors had lost workers. The survey captures contractors’ reports, not a complete count of labor supply, but it shows how uncertainty can affect staffing before a project reaches the point of a formal shortage.
“Shortages of virtually any craft can delay later stages or final completion of a project,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. The effect can spread beyond the task a missing worker would perform: construction schedules depend on trades arriving in sequence, and a gap at one stage can hold up work that follows.
What the pressure could mean for builders
With trades employment still below its pre-recession mark, the combination of fewer new entrants and a graying workforce leaves builders facing a labor pool that may struggle to keep pace with demand. The research brief doesn't forecast project delays or costs, and its broad workforce data can't identify which markets will be affected first. Still, the workforce trend, local variation and contractor reports point in the same direction: labor availability is a practical constraint that depends on occupation and place, not just the national headcount.
This is more significant than it looks. If you're planning or staffing construction work, the data argues for paying close attention to the specific trades and local markets involved. That said, weaker demand and high borrowing costs may limit how much labor pressure feeds into bids. The balance will depend on whether the pipeline can replace workers leaving physically demanding jobs while projects continue to require those skills.
