Tend pumps, compressors, or generators to provide power for tools, machinery, or equipment or to heat or move materials, such as asphalt.[2]
Where your edge is
Time Machine
Construction Laborers
Scrub through 211 years of this role's history — from when it first emerged, through every wave of technology that reshaped it, to the cited projections for where it's heading next.
18251850187519001925195019752000now
Drag the dot, click anywhere on the track, or use ← → arrow keys (Shift for 10-year jumps, PgUp/PgDn for 25).
2026
Known today as Construction Laborers (BLS SOC 47-2061)
US Employment
1.46M
BLS National Employment Matrix 2024 baseline for SOC 47-2061 (total employment including self-employed). Wage-and-salary employment: approximately 1,065,000; self-employed: approximately 392,000. The 2024 figure represents the baseline for the 2024-2034 BLS employment projections and reflects the strong construction market driven by IIJA (November 2021), IRA (August 2022), and CHIPS Act (August 2022) project pipelines beginning to flow through to ground-level construction activity.
Median Annual Wage
$40,730
Source: BLS-OEWS
Tool of the era · IIJA + IRA + CHIPS Act infrastructure pipeline — the decade-long demand wave
On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: $1.2 trillion over eight years, with $550 billion in new spending on roads, bridges, rail, broadband, water systems, and clean energy. On August 9, 2022, the CHIPS and Science Act added $52.7 billion in semiconductor manufacturing subsidies — each new semiconductor fab requires approximately 3,000-5,000 construction workers during a 3-5 year build-out. On August 16, 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act committed $369 billion to clean energy, with solar farms, wind installations, battery storage facilities, and transmission infrastructure all requiring ground-level construction labor for site prep, foundation work, and utility trenching. The combined legislative pipeline represents the largest sustained demand signal for construction laborers in US history since the Interstate Highway System. BLS projects 1,563,400 construction laborers by 2034 — a +7.3% gain from the 2024 baseline of 1,457,000 — but most large-market contractors report that the binding constraint on project delivery is not capital or materials but available skilled construction labor.
The IIJA-IRA-CHIPS demand wave has not yet fully materialized in employment counts: most of the capital is still in planning, permitting, and early construction phases as of 2024-2026. The peak labor demand is expected in 2026-2030 as projects move into full construction. The construction labor shortage — documented in AGC surveys showing 85% of contractors having difficulty finding craft workers — means that wage growth is likely to accompany volume growth.
Projection cone · present → 2034
What credible sources project
Scrub the slider past now to anchor each scenario on the scrubber. The spread you see below is the range of futures credible sources project for this role.
AGC / ABC construction labor shortage scenario
→ 2030
+12%
The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) have documented a persistent and growing skilled construction worker shortage through their annual workforce surveys. AGC's 2024 workforce survey found 85% of construction firms reporting difficulty hiring skilled craft workers, with construction laborers among the hardest categories to fill in non-union markets. If the legislative demand wave (IIJA, IRA, CHIPS) materializes as projected and the labor market tightens further, employment could grow 10-15% by 2030 even before the 2034 BLS projection period ends — the optimistic tail of the uncertainty cone driven by higher wages attracting new entrants and returning workers to the trade.
BLS National Employment Matrix 2024-34
→ 2034
+7%
BLS Employment Projections 2024-34 cycle. Published employment change for SOC 47-2061: +7.3% (106,500 projected net new jobs), from a base of 1,457,000 (2024, total employment including self-employed) to 1,563,400 (2034). BLS cites infrastructure investment legislation (IIJA), clean energy manufacturing (IRA), and semiconductor fab construction (CHIPS Act) as the primary demand drivers beyond baseline construction activity. Wage and salary employment projected from approximately 1,065,000 to approximately 1,140,000; self-employed from 392,000 to 420,000. This is the most authoritative baseline for the near-term outlook.
Eloundou et al. — "GPTs are GPTs" (2023)
→ 2028
-2%
GPT-4 task-by-task LLM exposure labeling on O*NET tasks for construction laborer occupations. Construction Laborers score very low on LLM exposure because essentially none of their core tasks — site clearing, concrete placement, demolition, trenching, materials handling, equipment signaling — are text-based tasks an LLM can perform. The -2% estimate represents the conservative lower-bound on near-term displacement from AI-assisted tools (layout robots, AI-guided survey equipment) applied to the narrow task subsets where they're deployed. The dominant story for this occupation is augmentation and demand expansion, not AI substitution.
Frey & Osborne (2013)
→ 2033
-30%
Gaussian-process classifier on O*NET task features. Frey & Osborne assigned Construction Laborers a probability of computerization of approximately 0.71 — placing them in the upper tercile of automation risk in the 702-occupation dataset. The bottleneck factors that did not push them higher: unpredictable physical environments, irregular and variable work surfaces, and coordination with other trades and supervisors. The -30% figure represents the theoretical employment ceiling if F&O's probability were fully realized (which F&O explicitly did not claim as a forecast). In practice, total construction laborer employment has grown from approximately 900,000 in 2009 to 1,457,000 in 2024 — a +62% increase — while the jobsite robotics that F&O's model implied have materialized only in narrow task categories. F&O's analysis has aged poorly for this occupation: the modeling assumed robotization would substitute broadly, but the technology has augmented or addressed shortage rather than substituted.
Today, in this role
What's shifting in the work right now
The historical view above shows how this role has moved. This is the present-day detail: which AI tools are picking up which tasks, where the edge still is, and the natural directions this work can grow.
What's changing in your day
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting — and what stays yours.
Read plans, instructions, or specifications to determine work activities.[2]
Where your edge is
Clean or prepare construction sites to eliminate possible hazards.[2]
Where your edge is
Present-day sources
Sources
Every claim on this page traces back to one of the following. Updated 2026-05-30.
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