Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here.
Construction wage growth slowed sharply from early 2023 to late 2024. Through the first 8 months of 2025, however, that decline has stalled—not exactly what you’d expect at a time when the industry is losing jobs.
Digging a little deeper, there’s something odd going on with this data. Average hourly earnings for residential building workers have surged more than 8% over the past year, rising faster than 4x the pace of nonresidential building workers’ earnings.
Two potential explanations come to mind.
First, immigration policy has likely had a disproportionate impact on the residential segment. If a decline in the undocumented workforce has led to an increase in the documented one, that would put upward pressure on wages.
[It’s hard to say this with much certainty because we don’t know the extent to which undocumented workers are reflected in the data.]
Second, residential employment has declined over the past year, and it’s possible that the lowest earning workers are being cut first, mechanically raising average earnings.
What’s Next
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