Construction’s retention game has flipped. Quit rates hit a , and February 2026 posted . People aren’t leaving the industry, but they aren’t entering it either. The immigration pipeline that absorbed two decades of demographic pressure has narrowed sharply, and the pipeline of new young workers is widening too slowly to close the gap. The result is that keeping the people you already have matters more than it has in years, because replacing them is harder than ever.
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That changes what retention actually means in practice. The conversation used to be about stopping people from leaving. Now it’s about how to plan around predictable attrition, develop the people you already have, and make assignment decisions before the exit interview rather than after it. The data backs this up clearly. Senior superintendents and project managers turn over at roughly a quarter the rate of their non-senior counterparts, which means the contractors who hold onto people through the first four years end up with a senior bench that competitors can’t easily hire in.
What follows are 50+ statistics across nine categories: the labor shortage, how turnover has shifted, what it costs, who stays and who leaves, why people leave, the commute factor, the treadmill effect, the rookie ratio, and where the workforce is heading. Most are public data from BLS, AGC, ABC, the Construction Industry Institute, the Census Bureau, and Deloitte; some come from °µÍø³Ô¹Ï’s , which analyzed anonymized data from 233 companies and 114,000 people, including nearly 40% of the ENR 400.
TL;DR
- Quit rates are at a nine-year low and hiring is at a record low, but the industry still needs roughly 349,000 net new workers in 2026
- Net international migration is projected to fall from 2.7 million in 2024 to about 321,000 in 2026, removing the demographic backstop the industry has leaned on
- Senior superintendents and project managers turn over at one-quarter the rate of their non-senior counterparts, making early-career retention the highest-leverage move
- The Top 50 of the ENR 400 face roughly the same attrition as the broader industry but grow at three times the rate, because they plan around turnover rather than try to eliminate it
- The average team rookie ratio sits at 36.4% and climbs to 56.2% on teams of 51+ people, with measurable consequences for safety, quality, and project outcomes
- 41% of the current construction workforce will reach retirement age by 2031, which makes the next four years of senior-tenure retention decisions disproportionately important
The construction labor shortage in 2026
Demand is outrunning supply across nearly every category, and the gap is widening as immigration policy and demographics compound the pipeline problem.
worked in construction as of March 2026, with year-over-year growth of 57,000 positions. The headline employment number is up, but the unmet demand is bigger:
- report difficulty filling open positions (AGC 2025 Workforce Survey)
- , and 80% report the same for salaried openings (AGC 2026 Outlook)
- The industry needs , rising to 456,000 in 2027 (ABC)
- Every creates demand for approximately 3,450 jobs
- report delaying projects due to labor shortages
- Project abandonment activity in August 2025
The immigration pipeline is part of why this is harder to solve through hiring alone. Net international migration (U.S. Census Bureau, January 2026). Immigrant workers make up , and that share exceeds 40% in high-activity states like California and Texas. A report being affected by immigration enforcement in the past six months, with 24% saying subcontractors lost workers as a result.
How turnover has actually shifted
Despite the shortage headlines, turnover itself has been falling, which is the part of the story most leaders miss. The in July 2025, and by February 2026 the hiring rate had dropped to , with quits at 1.5% and layoffs at 1.8%. Job openings fell to , a decline of 53,000 year-over-year.
Average employee tenure in construction sits at roughly four years according to , which is among the shortest of any major industry. The combination of lower quits, lower hiring, and short tenure overall describes a cooling labor market rather than a stable one. Fewer people are leaving voluntarily, but the industry still can’t find enough new workers to grow. The retention question shifts accordingly: less about how to stop the bleeding, more about how to keep and develop the people you’ve already invested in.
What turnover costs
The financial impact of losing people goes well beyond the cost of posting a job. Replacing a worker costs , depending on specialization and seniority, with junior craft workers at the lower end and superintendents, project managers, and specialized trades at the higher end. The cost compounds with role complexity, because the harder roles take months to source and longer still to bring up to full productivity.
The Construction Industry Institute found that a . The hidden costs sit underneath that headline number. Lost productivity during a vacancy, quality issues and rework from less-experienced replacements, and overtime to cover open positions all accumulate well beyond the direct cost of recruiting and onboarding.
“Company morale goes down, employees are burnt out because they’re going to do whatever it takes to get the job done,” says Shawn Gallant, COO at Columbia Construction. “It affects your employee retention and increases safety incidents on a project. You never want an unsafe site because you’re cutting a dollar on staffing.”
At the macro level, McKinsey projects that construction output could fall if current workforce trends persist.
Who stays and who leaves
Not all turnover is equal, and the seniority split inside two key roles is where the most useful retention data lives. The °µÍø³Ô¹Ï Benchmark Report shows a striking gap between senior and non-senior attrition for the two roles that have the greatest impact on project outcomes:
| Role | Non-senior attrition | Senior attrition | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Superintendent | 3.8x | ||
| Project Manager | 4.0x |
Senior superintendents and project managers turn over at roughly a quarter the rate of their non-senior counterparts. The growth data tells you why: non-senior supers saw while senior supers showed , and the same pattern holds for PMs (non-senior +4.8%, senior 0.0%). Senior-level supers and PMs simply don’t move around. Trying to hire experienced talent away from competitors is an expensive long shot. The more reliable path is hiring earlier in the career arc and being intentional about keeping people through the first four years.
The tenure data shows where the retention cliff sits:
| Role | Median tenure | Average tenure |
|---|---|---|
| Superintendent | 5.9 years | |
| Sr. Superintendent | 9.4 years | |
| Project Manager | 5.0 years | |
| Sr. Project Manager | 7.5 years |
If a superintendent or PM stays past the 3.7-year median, they’re on the path to senior tenure. The contractors that figure out how to retain people through that window end up with something competitors can’t easily replicate.
“What happens when you don’t have a clear picture of your staff is you don’t see ‘John Smith’ is ready for a promotion,” says Lisa Villasmil, VP of People & Culture at Cauldwell Wingate. “So you hire an outside senior PM instead of promoting internally and backfilling the open position.”
The Benchmark Report also draws on findings from °µÍø³Ô¹Ï’s 2025 State of Workforce Planning survey: 100% of construction leaders agree a project team’s collective experience plays a significant role in creating positive project outcomes, and 93% have experienced talent-related impact on operations.
Why construction workers leave
Career development is the leading reason workers leave, and it outpaces compensation by nearly 2:1 across industries. The breaks down the top departure drivers:
| Reason | Share of departures |
|---|---|
| Career development | |
| Total rewards (compensation/benefits) | |
| Work-life balance |
That ranking matters in construction specifically because earlier-career superintendents and PMs are actively evaluating employers based on the work itself: the project types, owners, and delivery methods that will define their reputation and open future doors. The Benchmark Report reinforces this directly. Top contractors that plan according to the unique needs of each project type can offer newer team members the variety of experience that keeps them engaged, while ensuring they’re paired with senior talent who can mentor them.
Mental health is another factor that compounds compensation alone. CDC data shows that , and (CDC MMWR, National Vital Statistics System). Hours compound the strain: , 25% work 60 or more, and .
Commute as an actionable retention lever
One of the most actionable retention variables in construction is commute distance, because it’s a decision the contractor controls during assignment planning. The superintendent commute distribution from the Benchmark Report , which is where retention risk concentrates. Peer-reviewed research published in AERA Open found that (Santelli & Grissom, 2024). The study examined public-sector workers, but the underlying mechanism (commute fatigue compounding job dissatisfaction) generalizes naturally to construction roles where supers and PMs travel meaningful distances daily.
The construction-specific commute data shows how demanding the travel can be:
- each way
- Another
- each way
The point of pulling commute into the conversation is that it’s a variable you can adjust ahead of time. Knowing which superintendents face long commutes on their current assignments, and factoring that into the next assignment, turns retention into a planning decision that happens months before anyone starts thinking about leaving.
The treadmill effect
Attrition shows up as a growth problem, not just a people problem. °µÍø³Ô¹Ï’s Benchmark Report names the dynamic the “treadmill effect,” where attrition offsets hiring so companies have to run hard just to hold their position. The math is simple: an organization aiming to add 100 people with a to net the growth. At .
The real-world impact shows up in the growth distribution. In 2025, and another 26% remained flat. Nearly half the industry failed to achieve net headcount growth.
The most useful finding in the report sits in the comparison between the Top 50 ENR 400 and the rest of the industry. Top 50 contractors face , but their . The largest contractors aren’t winning because they’ve solved turnover. They’re winning because they plan around it. Proactive hiring and workforce planning, rather than lower attrition, is what separates the leaders from the pack.
McKinsey’s productivity research supports the same point from another angle: productivity for major construction projects each time labor markets tightened. The contractors that maintained planning capacity through tight markets came out ahead.
Rookie ratios and the experience mix
With high attrition flowing through project teams, one metric that has emerged among strategic contractors is the “rookie ratio,” which measures the share of newer team members (typically under one year of company tenure) relative to the total team. °µÍø³Ô¹Ï’s Benchmark Report puts a number on it for the first time. The , and the average masks meaningful variation by team size:
| Team size | Average rookie ratio |
|---|---|
| 3-5 people | |
| 6-10 people | |
| 11-20 people | |
| 21-30 people | |
| 31-50 people | |
| 51+ people |
On teams of 51 or more people, the rookie ratio averages above 56%, meaning more than half the team is in their first year with the company. That has direct consequences for safety, quality, and project outcomes. Travelers’ , which analyzed more than 1.2 million workers compensation claims, found that first-year employees account for approximately 36% of all workplace injuries and 34% of overall claim costs across industries. In construction, the early-tenure injury rate skews higher because new workers are concentrated in the most physically demanding tasks before they build the muscle memory and risk awareness that come with experience.
NCCER’s research with the Construction Industry Institute shows the flip side. Trained craft workers achieve a in training, with productivity targets met more reliably and retention improved when formal training programs are in place.
The contractors who use rookie ratio well don’t just track it. They set targets for it by project type and complexity, pairing newer team members with experienced mentors and routing the most straightforward projects toward teams that can accommodate a higher share of newer workers without compromising outcomes.
Where the workforce is heading
The sectors driving the most workforce demand are also the ones requiring the largest teams and longest commitments. Year-over-year growth data from the Benchmark Report shows where the workforce is being pulled:
| Sector | 2025 YoY growth |
|---|---|
| Industrial / Manufacturing | |
| Transportation / Infrastructure | |
| Data Center | |
| Commercial (General) | |
| Energy / Power / Utilities | |
| Education | |
| Hospitality |
Solar projects stand out for the sheer scale of workforce commitment, with a . Data center construction spending , per the AIA Consensus Construction Forecast, making it the only sector showing strong growth in an otherwise weak market.
The pipeline of new workers is showing early signs of improving. The share of young adults interested in construction in 2026 (NAHB), and at a said they would reconsider construction. currently offer median wages at or above that threshold.
The demographic shift is already visible in the data. Gen Z’s share of the construction workforce , while Baby Boomers over the same period. Women in construction reached (NAHB analysis of BLS data). Deloitte estimates , which puts a clock on how much time contractors have to develop the next generation before the senior bench thins out.
What contractors who plan ahead do differently
The Top 50 of the ENR 400 are , nearly two years further than the . That gap reflects something specific about how they operate. Reliable data, integrated systems, and company-wide coordination are what extend a planning horizon, and the longer horizon is what creates the optionality the rest of the industry doesn’t have.
“Strategic workforce planning gives our clients confidence that we can provide the right people to build their projects,” says , Vice President of Operations at W.E. O’Neil Construction. “If we don’t consider all the necessary strategic factors, we won’t be able to assign the appropriate teams, and those clients won’t keep coming back.”
The supporting evidence is consistent. Contractors with realized profits on more jobs, completed more projects on or ahead of schedule, and posted better safety performance, according to the Construction Industry Institute. Career development opportunities correlate with (Work Institute). NCCER’s research with the Construction Industry Institute shows that .
The common thread across these findings isn’t a single tactic. It’s visibility. The contractors pulling ahead know who they have, where those people are, what they’ve built, and what they need next. Experience-based staffing tools like °µÍø³Ô¹Ï consolidate the people, project, and pipeline data so that retention decisions happen during assignment planning, not during exit interviews. Whether the goal is closing the planning horizon gap, getting ahead of attrition before it constrains growth, or building teams with the right experience mix, the work starts with the data being in one place.