Contractors Cut Men in 2025

Women account for 86% of the year's construction job growth

Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two-minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here.

Women accounted for 12,000 of the 14,000 construction jobs gained in 2025. In August, their share of the industry’s workforce reached a record high of 14.46%.

This trend, however, has little to do with women flocking to construction occupations or diversity hiring efforts.

“Construction employment,” as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, includes anyone who works for a company that primarily delivers construction services. So a human resources job counts as a construction job just the same as a welder does.

Occupational employment-by-gender data shows that women typically account for a higher share of white collar jobs. More than 75% of HR workers and about 65% of marketing managers are women, for instance.

The share of women in actual construction occupations, while rising, was just 4.3% in 2024. For most trades, it’s actually below 3%, though women do account for a higher share of painters and construction and building inspectors.

When the industry contracts, as it did in 2025, front-line construction jobs are cut before white collars ones. This is why women’s share of the industry’s workforce tends to rise during recessions (look at 2009 in the first graph above).

Another factor here is that huge contractors, which tend to have more white collar workers, have had a particularly good year, while smaller contractors have not. Backlog for the largest contractors is at a four-year high, while backlog for the smallest contractors is at a four-year low, according to ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator.

That divergence may be due to the data center boom, which has primarily benefited contractors with the size and experience to handle massive, billion dollar projects.

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