Construction unemployment was 3.5% in September, and ABC's state estimates run from 1.7% in Maryland to 9.5% in North Dakota

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 11:33:12 -0400

The unemployment rate for construction workers was 3.5% in September 2026, not seasonally adjusted, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey. That is 0.3 percentage point below September 2025 and 0.4 point above August. On October 30, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) published state estimates for the same month, built by Markstein Advisors from BLS data. They put every state below 10%, with Maryland lowest at 1.7% and North Dakota highest at 9.5%. In the 25 months charted below, September ties for the fifth-lowest of 24 monthly readings. It sits under the 4.8% average for the last 12 months, an average of 11 readings because October 2025 has no value.

Construction unemployment was 3.5% in September, 0.3 point below a year earlier

Unemployment rate, construction industry, private wage and salary workers, percent, not seasonally adjusted

The series has no value for October 2025. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

U.S. construction unemployment rate, last 13 months, not seasonally adjusted
Month	Rate (%)	Change from prior month (pts)	Change from a year earlier (pts)
Sep 2025	3.8%	0.6	0.1
Oct 2025
Nov 2025	4.1%		-0.5
Dec 2025	5.0%	0.9	-0.2
Jan 2026	7.1%	2.1	0.6
Feb 2026	6.9%	-0.2	-0.3
Mar 2026	6.7%	-0.2	1.3
Apr 2026	3.8%	-2.9	-1.8
May 2026	4.1%	0.3	0.6
Jun 2026	4.7%	0.6	1.3
Jul 2026	3.7%	-1.0	0.3
Aug 2026	3.1%	-0.6	-0.1
Sep 2026	3.5%	0.4	-0.3

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Without seasonal adjustment, the rate generally rises in the fall and winter and falls in late spring and summer, ABC’s background note explains, so the September-to-September comparison is the one to read. The 0.4-point rise from August is smaller than last year’s, when the rate went from 3.2% in August 2025 to 3.8% in September.

What moved

BLS Table A-14 counts 359,000 unemployed construction workers in September 2026, down from 404,000 a year earlier. A worker is counted as unemployed in construction if construction was the last industry they worked in and they looked for work in the prior four weeks.

ABC’s state numbers are estimates. BLS publishes a monthly construction unemployment rate only for the nation, so Markstein Advisors runs a model on state employment and unemployment data to produce one for each state.

Estimated construction unemployment rates by state, not seasonally adjusted, ranked lowest to highest for September 2026. *Delaware and Hawaii include mining and logging.
State	Census division	Sep 2019 (%)	Sep 2025 (%)	Aug 2026 (%)	Sep 2026 (%)	Change from Sep 2025 (pts)	Change from Sep 2019 (pts)
Maryland	South Atlantic	4.7%	2.1%	1.7%	1.7%	-0.4	-3.0
North Carolina	South Atlantic	1.6%	2.2%	1.6%	1.8%	-0.4	0.2
Georgia	South Atlantic	1.9%	2.0%	1.8%	2.1%	0.1	0.2
Tennessee	East South Central	2.3%	2.4%	2.0%	2.1%	-0.3	-0.2
South Carolina	South Atlantic	1.5%	2.7%	2.3%	2.2%	-0.5	0.7
Utah	Mountain	1.6%	2.6%	2.1%	2.2%	-0.4	0.6
Florida	South Atlantic	2.2%	2.4%	2.2%	2.3%	-0.1	0.1
New Hampshire	New England	2.3%	4.6%	3.4%	2.3%	-2.3	0.0
Alabama	East South Central	3.0%	2.2%	2.3%	2.7%	0.5	-0.3
Idaho	Mountain	3.1%	2.7%	1.9%	2.7%	0.0	-0.4
Indiana	East North Central	4.0%	2.7%	2.2%	2.7%	0.0	-1.3
Rhode Island	New England	7.1%	4.0%	3.3%	2.7%	-1.3	-4.4
Iowa	West North Central	4.3%	3.0%	2.5%	2.9%	-0.1	-1.4
Maine	New England	4.2%	2.8%	2.1%	2.9%	0.1	-1.3
Missouri	West North Central	2.3%	3.2%	2.6%	3.0%	-0.2	0.7
Ohio	East North Central	5.5%	3.7%	2.1%	3.0%	-0.7	-2.5
Oregon	Pacific	3.3%	4.1%	3.0%	3.0%	-1.1	-0.3
Vermont	New England	2.7%	3.5%	2.3%	3.1%	-0.4	0.4
California	Pacific	3.2%	3.6%	2.8%	3.2%	-0.4	0.0
Pennsylvania	Middle Atlantic	2.7%	4.4%	3.6%	3.3%	-1.1	0.6
Nebraska	West North Central	2.6%	4.4%	2.8%	3.5%	-0.9	0.9
Colorado	Mountain	1.9%	3.7%	3.5%	3.6%	-0.1	1.7
Nevada	Mountain	2.7%	3.9%	2.2%	3.6%	-0.3	0.9
Wisconsin	East North Central	4.0%	3.0%	2.1%	3.6%	0.6	-0.4
Kansas	West North Central	3.3%	4.0%	3.6%	3.7%	-0.3	0.4
Washington	Pacific	4.7%	4.1%	3.3%	3.7%	-0.4	-1.0
Arkansas	West South Central	2.7%	4.3%	3.2%	3.8%	-0.5	1.1
Mississippi	East South Central	4.4%	4.1%	2.6%	3.8%	-0.3	-0.6
New Jersey	Middle Atlantic	2.1%	5.1%	3.6%	3.8%	-1.3	1.7
Kentucky	East South Central	4.4%	3.7%	2.9%	3.9%	0.2	-0.5
Illinois	East North Central	2.9%	4.5%	3.8%	4.0%	-0.5	1.1
South Dakota	West North Central	2.5%	2.6%	3.2%	4.1%	1.5	1.6
Texas	West South Central	2.5%	4.2%	3.6%	4.1%	-0.1	1.6
Montana	Mountain	3.1%	4.9%	2.8%	4.2%	-0.7	1.1
Virginia	South Atlantic	3.5%	4.0%	3.3%	4.2%	0.2	0.7
Delaware*	South Atlantic	2.3%	4.8%	3.7%	4.3%	-0.5	2.0
Louisiana	West South Central	3.8%	5.6%	3.4%	4.3%	-1.3	0.5
New Mexico	Mountain	4.2%	4.3%	3.8%	4.3%	0.0	0.1
Oklahoma	West South Central	2.2%	4.2%	4.1%	4.3%	0.1	2.1
Hawaii*	Pacific	6.1%	2.7%	3.3%	4.4%	1.7	-1.7
Arizona	Mountain	4.3%	4.8%	4.2%	4.5%	-0.3	0.2
West Virginia	South Atlantic	5.3%	4.6%	4.2%	4.7%	0.1	-0.6
New York	Middle Atlantic	4.2%	5.0%	4.0%	4.8%	-0.2	0.6
Connecticut	New England	2.1%	4.1%	3.7%	5.0%	0.9	2.9
Wyoming	Mountain	4.3%	7.1%	3.7%	5.2%	-1.9	0.9
Massachusetts	New England	3.7%	5.7%	4.6%	5.5%	-0.2	1.8
Michigan	East North Central	5.4%	5.8%	5.2%	5.8%	0.0	0.4
Minnesota	West North Central	4.5%	5.8%	5.2%	6.7%	0.9	2.2
Alaska	Pacific	8.8%	6.3%	3.2%	7.5%	1.2	-1.3
North Dakota	West North Central	4.5%	3.9%	7.0%	9.5%	5.6	5.0

Source: abc.org

The low end is mostly the Southeast. After Maryland come North Carolina at 1.8%, Georgia and Tennessee at 2.1%, and South Carolina and Utah at 2.2%. ABC says Maryland’s 1.7% is its lowest September reading on record, and North Carolina and Tennessee had their second-lowest.

The high end is the Upper Midwest, plus Alaska and Massachusetts. North Dakota (9.5%), Alaska (7.5%), Minnesota (6.7%), Michigan (5.8%) and Massachusetts (5.5%) have the five highest estimates. North Dakota is the outlier in the year-over-year column too, up 5.6 points from 3.9% in September 2025. No other state rose more than 1.7 points (Hawaii, where the estimate also counts mining and logging). Alaska’s estimate more than doubled in a month, from 3.2% in August to 7.5%, though it was 6.3% in September 2025, so the year-over-year rise is 1.2 points.

Counted from ABC’s spreadsheet, 32 states had a lower estimated rate than in September 2025, 14 had a higher one and four were unchanged. The monthly count leans the other way. ABC reports that 44 states rose from August to September, four fell (New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina) and two were flat (Maryland and Oregon).

So the comparison point matters. ABC says 39 states are below their February 2020 rates. Compared with September 2019, the same month before the pandemic, 17 states are lower, 31 are higher and California and New Hampshire are unchanged.

ABC also notes that payroll construction employment, which comes from a separate survey of employers, was 103,000 higher than in September 2025 before seasonal adjustment, and 8.4 million after it. Bernard Markstein, who ran the analysis, pointed to large projects as one cause: “Data center construction is also absorbing a significant share of available skilled labor and contributing to elevated building materials prices.” The state tables do not split the unemployed by project type, so that link is his reading of the market.

How to use this number

The state estimate is a rough measure of how many idle, experienced construction workers are in the labor pool where you hire. Two practical uses:

Before you price labor-heavy work in another state, look up its September rate and its change from a year ago. A rate near 2%, as in Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia or Tennessee, means few experienced workers are looking. If you plan to hire locally there, budget for higher wages or for travel and per diem to bring crews in. A rate above 5% with a rising trend points to more local applicants.
Track your own time to fill field positions, in calendar days from posting to start date, by state. If your time to fill in a state stays flat while its estimated rate fell by a point over the year, your recruiting is holding up against a tighter market. If both move the wrong way, raise your wage assumptions on the next bid there.

For both uses, compare a month with the same month a year earlier.

Revisions and caveats

The national rate comes from the Current Population Survey, the monthly household survey that ABC’s background note puts at roughly 60,000 households. The prior month was not revised. August’s 3.1% was the same in the September 4 and October 2 versions of the series in ALFRED, the St. Louis Fed’s archive of past data versions. BLS introduces new population controls each January, and the A-14 table notes that 2025 data use a new industry classification and are not strictly comparable with earlier years. That limits how much weight the 2019 comparisons can carry.

The construction rate also comes from a small subset of the survey, so it has more sampling error than the overall rate. ABC’s background note says a monthly move may come from sampling error and that a sustained trend over several months is more reliable.

The state figures carry two more layers of uncertainty. They are model estimates, and Markstein Advisors updates past months when states revise their employment data, so a state’s August or September value can change next month. Delaware and Hawaii are estimated for construction, mining and logging combined. For a small state such as North Dakota or Alaska, treat a single month’s jump as a reading to confirm against October’s estimate.

Unemployment | Construction Metrics

Construction unemployment was 3.5% in September, and ABC's state estimates run from 1.7% in Maryland to 9.5% in North Dakota

What moved

How to use this number

Revisions and caveats