According to an Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) analysis of the just published U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2024 Union Members Summary, a record low 10.3% of the U.S. construction industry belongs to a union, a decrease from the prior historic low of 10.7% in 2023.
BLS reports that 7,978,000 construction industry workers were not union members in 2024, a 12,000-person increase from 7,966,000 workers in 2023, while union membership decreased by 38,000 to 916,000. The construction industry shrunk by 26,000 workers, from 8.92 million in 2023 to 8.894 million in 2024.
“It is remarkable that the construction industry’s union membership dropped to a new historic low of 10.3% following four years of anti-competitive and inflationary Biden administration policy schemes pushing taxpayer-funded construction projects to union-signatory contractors through project labour agreements on new federal and federally assisted infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing construction projects,” said ABC Vice President of Regulatory, Labor and State Affairs Ben Brubeck. “Barriers to construction industry union membership are extremely low––workers can freely go to a local union hiring hall, join a union and be dispatched to union-signatory contractor jobsites in a short amount of time. What this says about American construction workers is that they are not wild about the product unions are selling, and unions’ radical policies and politics are not appealing.”
“With construction materials prices up 38.6% since February 2020, higher interest rates and a workforce shortage of 439,000 in 2025, the headwinds currently facing the construction industry are considerable,” said Brubeck. “Now is the time for the Trump administration to level the playing field in a way that creates more value for taxpayers through healthy competition for construction projects based on merit. One way President Trump can give the contracting community immediate regulatory relief is by fully eliminating former President Biden’s harmful pro-PLA policies, one of which a federal court ruled against earlier this month because it reduced competition on 12 federal construction contracts and violated congressional intent. Eliminating PLA mandates would save taxpayers an estimated $10 billion per year on federal and federally assisted construction projects.”
