Immigrants are playing a key role in addressing the labor shortage that has troubled the construction industry during the pandemic, according to a recent analysis by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). Foreign-born US workers made up a record 25% of the construction labor force last year, and the sector saw the highest influx of immigrant workers since 2005-06.
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Immigrants are also working more in general. Labor force participation among foreign-born workers has exceeded pre-pandemic levels, while non-immigrant workers are still trying to catch up.
What’s driving the increased immigrant labor force in construction?
A booming labor market in 2022 and 2023 may have drawn non-immigrant workers to other industries that are less physically demanding, as per Erica Groshen, senior economic advisor at Cornell University’s Institute for Compensation Studies and former commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
“So [if] people are getting more opportunities elsewhere, then you have fewer native-born people who are applying for those jobs,” Groshen explained. “[US-born] people have opportunities that are going to earn them more money or be less dangerous.” This has created more job openings for immigrants to fill.
Risks faced by foreign-born construction workers
Immigrant workers are at a higher risk of getting injured or dying on the job. For example, in 2021, immigrant Latino workers—both documented and undocumented—made up 8% of the US labor force but accounted for 14% of job-related deaths and 27% of construction-related deaths, according to the BLS.
This is partly because immigrant workers have less access to construction apprenticeships run by unions, which typically provide more training and education, mentioned Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project in New York City. Instead, most end up in construction as gig workers or day laborers.
“Because it’s the workforce that is the least trained, most of them are more vulnerable to accept the most dangerous conditions in the work sites,” Guallpa said.
Impact of the construction labor shortage on the economy
While more immigrants worked in construction last year, the industry has not fully recovered from its lingering workforce shortage. The job openings rate still remains slightly higher than it was in 2019.
“Compared to the peak employment levels of 2006, construction is short 525,000 native-born workers [as of 2022] and new immigrants only partially close the gap,” noted Natalia Siniavskaia, a researcher and economist for the NAHB.
The sector’s workforce shortage has broad implications. A strain on labor in the industry will make it tougher for the US to complete projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. With fewer workers, projects get delayed and employers fill jobs with less-qualified workers to close the gap, reducing the quality of the finished product.
