Home-Side Trades Shed 7,900 Jobs in September as Data Centers Soak Up Crews
Construction added 11,000 jobs in September, but residential specialty trade contractors lost 7,900 while data-center work drove nonresidential hiring. Layoffs hit a record low, the August hires rate was the lowest for that month in 26 years, and pay is up 4.3%.
Ridge Report
3 min read
The September jobs report split the trades down the middle. Construction added 11,000 jobs and the industry’s unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, according to the Associated General Contractors’ Oct. 2 analysis of new Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Every one of those gains came on the nonresidential side.
Residential specialty trade contractors — the trade subs working on houses — lost 7,900 jobs in September and 28,800 over the past year, falling to 2.34 million, according to AGC’s BLS employment table. Nonresidential specialty trade contractors added 12,300 for the month and 84,700 over the year. “The residential segment continues to hemorrhage workers,” Associated Builders and Contractors Chief Economist Anirban Basu said.
Two industries under one roof
Basu put the split on data centers. “Industry employment growth is increasingly concentrated on the nonresidential side as the data center boom continues to support rapid hiring of certain specialty trade contractors,” he said. ABC counted the seventh straight month of construction job gains.
AGC’s weekly Data DIGest shows where the money is going. Data-center construction spending soared 73% year over year in August, while all other private nonresidential spending combined fell 5.9%. Private residential spending fell 4.8%, and residential improvements were down 7.4%, a series AGC notes is often revised by large amounts.
Basu also flagged a cost warning for the commercial side. In an Oct. 1 NRCA summary of federal job-openings data, he said nonresidential contractors “will likely experience faster labor cost escalation due to these shortages in certain occupational categories like electricians and HVAC workers.” Roofers weren’t named, but the shrinking pool of experienced jobseekers AGC tracks covers every trade.
Nobody’s leaving, nobody’s coming
The August Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, as summarized by AGC, shows a frozen market. Construction had 251,000 openings at the end of August, up 18% from a year earlier but the lowest level since March, per NRCA. Hires totaled 308,000, and the hires rate of 3.7% was the lowest August rate in the survey’s 26-year history. Layoffs and discharges dropped to 99,000, the fewest and lowest rate for any month on record. The quit rate held at 1.8%.
“Both the demand for and supply of construction workers are decreasing,” Basu said.
Contractors are holding onto people, and pay keeps climbing. Average hourly earnings for construction production and nonsupervisory workers reached $39.20 in September, 20.2% above the private-sector average of $32.60, according to AGC. “Filling positions remains a major concern as the pool of jobseekers with recent construction experience continues to shrink,” AGC Chief Economist Ken Simonson said.
The pipeline problem
A new national report says training can’t keep pace. The Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, founded in July by BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford and Google, released The State of America’s Skilled Trades report on Sept. 30. It estimates the U.S. must fill 1.7 million skilled trades openings each year through 2035, while training programs produce just 55 workers for every 100 needed. The study covers 124 occupations in all 50 states, and roofers are one of the occupations in its companion dashboard. DEWALT and Milwaukee Tool were among 14 new members announced the same day.
Manufacturers are building their own on-ramps. On Oct. 2, GAF expanded its DoW SkillBridge partnership with a no-cost, six-month manufacturing training program for transitioning service members at five plants: Myerstown, Pa.; Michigan City and Mount Vernon, Ind.; Newton, Kan.; and Ennis, Texas. GAF said its Roofing Academy earned SkillBridge accreditation last year and has trained hundreds of service-affiliated participants since 2020, with half going on to roofing jobs.
AGC CEO Jeffrey Shoaf’s prescription covered training and “pursuing sensible immigration reforms,” an issue that has already hit nearly 3 in 10 construction firms. For roofing owners, the takeaway is that cash alone won’t fix this, as we found when we looked at why signing bonuses aren’t fixing the crew shortage. The shops that come out ahead will be the ones with a real apprentice pipeline.
Sources
AGC, Oct. 2, 2026. AGC employment table (BLS CES), updated Oct. 2, 2026. AGC Data DIGest, Sept. 28–Oct. 2, 2026. ABC, Oct. 2, 2026. NRCA, Oct. 1, 2026. Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades via BlackRock, Sept. 30, 2026. GAF via PR Newswire, Oct. 2, 2026.
