Construction's 2026 labor divide: electrical payrolls grew while residential jobs fell

Construction employers added 92,000 payroll jobs between December 2025 and September 2026. Residential building and specialty trade employers moved in the other direction, losing about 23,900 jobs over the same period.

Electrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors expanded more quickly than construction overall. Their payrolls grew by 42,000 jobs, or 3.8%, through August, the latest detailed month available as of October 18. Those are jobs throughout the electrical contractor industry, including its office and managerial roles. They are not a count of 42,000 additional electricians. The comparisons use BLS industry employment data and December baselines from the BLS public data service.

That divide is the central employment story of 2026 so far. Growing electrical payrolls and persistent difficulty finding qualified people have coexisted with residential job losses, lower construction spending and weaker markets in many places. Widespread reports of hiring difficulty do not describe every contractor's order book or every worker's prospects.

Where the payroll growth went

The October 2 employment release put construction employment at 8.364 million in September, about 1.1% above December. Nonresidential specialty trades accounted for the largest increase among the major construction components.

Construction industry	Payroll change, December 2025 to September 2026
Residential building	-2,400
Residential specialty trades	-21,500
Nonresidential building	+22,600
Nonresidential specialty trades	+79,000
Heavy and civil engineering	+14,900
Total construction	+92,000

These are seasonally adjusted estimates. Detailed changes sum to approximately 92,600 rather than the published total's 92,000 because the published series have different rounding precision. The table should not be read as an exact accounting identity.

Growth was uneven during the year as well. In the same revised BLS data, construction gained 47,000 jobs from December through June and another 45,000 from June through September. Almost half the net increase arrived in the third quarter. That comparison uses consistent historical levels, rather than adding together monthly headlines that were later revised.

The residential decline and nonresidential increase describe employers' industry classifications. The separate electrical contractor series spans residential and nonresidential work and overlaps these categories; it cannot be added to them. BLS also counts establishment jobs rather than unique workers. Someone on two employers' payrolls can be counted twice, while an unincorporated self-employed electrician is outside this payroll measure.

Data centers and power grew within a smaller spending market

The spending record helps explain why payroll gains could concentrate in particular kinds of work. According to the Census Bureau's October 1 release, total construction spending during January through August was 3.1% below the same eight months of 2025.

The private construction detail shows a large separation between data centers and much of the surrounding market.

Private construction category	January–August 2026 spending	Change from January–August 2025
Residential	$594.1 billion	-4.1%
Nonresidential, all categories	$499.3 billion	-4.8%
Data centers	$45.2 billion	+41.7%
Electric power	$89.7 billion	+6.1%
General office	$30.4 billion	-11.1%
Manufacturing	$114.6 billion	-22.2%

Best Electrician Jobs calculates that private nonresidential spending excluding data centers fell approximately 7.8%. That subtracts the data-center totals from private nonresidential spending in both years. Data centers are already included in the nonresidential total and in Census's office category.

These are actual year-to-date dollars, not annualized monthly rates. They are also nominal amounts. Changes in prices, project timing, labor intensity and the mix of projects prevent a direct conversion from spending to employment.

The distinction matters particularly for manufacturing. Individual semiconductor and industrial projects continued to advance, but those milestones did not make manufacturing construction a uniformly expanding market. Nor does the data-center figure represent every dollar technology companies spent: Census excludes land and special-purpose equipment such as racks and servers.

Hiring difficulty survived the slowdown

The AGC/NCCER national workforce survey supplies evidence about hiring difficulty that payroll totals cannot. Among 103 responding firms with electrician openings, 81% reported difficulty filling them. This measures those employers' experience, not the share of electrician positions left vacant nationwide.

The same survey recorded divergent staffing decisions. Of 1,825 headcount responses, 37% reported reductions of at least 5% over the preceding 12 months, while 34% reported increases of at least 5%. That period includes part of 2025; it is not a calendar-2026 job count.

The published data-center subset was expanding more often: 60% of 222 headcount respondents reported growth of at least 5%, compared with 36% of 563 respondents in the non-data-center subset. Those two subsets do not account for every survey respondent and should not be treated as exhaustive divisions of the industry.

AGC's methodology says 1,830 individuals answered at least one portion during July and August. It describes a range of firm sizes, markets and union/open-shop operations, but does not provide a probability-sampling design, response rate or margin of error. The findings support a pattern among respondents, not a precise national shortage estimate. Firm percentages also give a small contractor and a large employer equal weight, unlike a payroll job count.

The distinction between a qualified vacancy and an available person matters here. A worker leaving residential construction may need different training, credentials, travel arrangements or experience before filling a specialized industrial position. The national data do not measure how often that transition occurred in 2026.

Average electrical industry earnings continued rising

Average hourly earnings for all employees in the electrical and wiring contractor industry reached $43.61 in August, up from $41.90 in December. That is a 4.1% increase during 2026 through August and 6.3% above August 2025, using the BLS earnings series.

The production and nonsupervisory measure reached $42.69, up 4.2% from December and 6.4% from August 2025. It covers that employee group across the industry; it is still not an electrician-only wage measure.

These are nominal national averages, affected by the mix of employees and paid hours. They do not establish the raise received by the same worker, the wage offered to an apprentice, a local union scale or the value of benefits. They nevertheless show that weaker construction spending had not translated into falling average hourly earnings in the electrical contractor industry.

More vacancies did not mean faster gross hiring

The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey adds an important counterpoint. Construction averaged about 259,000 job openings during January through August, compared with 242,000 over the same months of 2025, a 6.9% increase calculated from the monthly seasonally adjusted estimates.

Yet construction recorded about 2.548 million hires over those eight months, down 5.4% from 2.693 million a year earlier. Separations fell more sharply, by about 12%. A slower pace of people entering and leaving employers can coexist with positive net payroll growth.

Job openings measure vacancies on the last business day of each month. Hires measure a flow during the month and include replacement hiring. Neither is a count of net new payroll jobs, and repeat hiring can involve the same person. Adding monthly vacancy counts would count some unfilled positions repeatedly. JOLTS also covers construction broadly and supplies no electrician-specific vacancy count here.

The national result concealed weaker local markets

Geography made the split visible. In its September 30 analysis of government data, AGC found employment gains in 177 of 360 metro areas, or 49%, between August 2025 and August 2026. Employment declined in 126 and was unchanged in 57.

Houston's construction employment increased by 14,100 over that year, while Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario, California lost 4,600. These are same-month annual comparisons without seasonal adjustment, not changes since January. The underlying table identifies both examples as construction-only series; some other areas combine construction with mining and logging. Neither example isolates electrician employment or attributes the change to a particular project.

For a residential contractor in a shrinking market, national electrical industry growth could therefore offer little evidence about the next local job. For an employer competing for experienced electrical crews on expanding power or data-center work, a softer national spending total could be equally unhelpful. Location, project type and the role being hired were material differences throughout the year.

Data note: Information available through October 18, 2026. Broad payroll comparisons run from December 2025 through September 2026; detailed electrical industry payroll and earnings estimates, JOLTS and spending run through August. All BLS comparisons use one current-vintage retrieval, with recent payroll observations preliminary. Census year-to-date spending is not seasonally adjusted. Survey periods and metro comparison periods differ and are identified above.