Union labor has long been a defining feature of the American construction industry. From large-scale infrastructure projects to specialized trade work, union workers operate under collective bargaining agreements that set wages, benefits, and workplace standards. As the construction industry confronts a significant labor shortage and wage pressures mount across all sectors, understanding the role of union labor in today’s market has become increasingly important for contractors, project owners, and workers alike.
Titan builds with union labor. That is a choice, and the case for it is worth making plainly.
Where Union Labor Stands Today
According to an analysis by the Associated Builders and Contractors of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2025 Union Members Summary, 11.1% of U.S. construction industry workers belong to a union, up from 10.3% in 2024. With a total construction workforce of approximately 9 million workers in 2025, that translates to roughly 995,000 union members.
Labor Notes, citing federal household survey data, reported that construction unions grew their share from approximately 11% to 12% of the sector during 2025, driven in part by a data center building boom and activity on public water and highway projects.
Union membership in construction remains geographically concentrated. Unionized labor is most prevalent in the Northeast, Midwest, and certain urban centers, where long-standing relationships between unions, contractors, and public agencies sustain consistent demand. In traditionally union-friendly states like California, however, more than 87% of the private construction workforce operates on a non-union basis.
The share is smaller than it once was. That is precisely why the contractors who stay with it matter.
Wages and Compensation
One of the clearest differences between union and non-union construction work lies in compensation. Union construction workers earned an average of $33.86 per hour in base wages in 2025, compared to $25.16 per hour for non-union workers. When fringe benefits, including health insurance, pension contributions, and other employer payments, are factored in, the total compensation gap widens further.
Collective bargaining agreements settled in the first half of 2025 delivered an average 4.7% increase in wages, fringe benefits, and other employer payments for union craft workers, according to the Construction Labor Research Council, which the CLRC’s executive director described as among the highest increases in 15 years. By comparison, non-union workers received an average 3.2% pay increase over the same period.
Those numbers represent a real cost, and it is a cost worth carrying. A tradesman with health insurance, a pension, and a wage that keeps pace with the work is a tradesman who stays in the trade. The industry does not get to complain about a shortage of skilled labor and then treat skilled labor as the first line to cut.
The Labor Shortage Context
Both union and non-union sectors are navigating a serious workforce shortage. ABC projected the construction industry would need approximately 349,000 new workers in 2026 just to keep pace with demand. Looking further ahead, ABC estimates the industry will need 456,000 new workers in 2027, and Deloitte has projected a potential shortage of over two million skilled craft professionals by 2028 if current trends continue.
Construction unemployment stood at 3.2% in August 2025, well below the national average of 4.3%, underscoring how competitive the market for skilled tradespeople has become.
There is evidence that union contractors face a somewhat different hiring reality than their open-shop counterparts. Among firms with openings for hourly craft workers, 86% of open-shop firms reported difficulty filling positions in 2025, compared to 77% of union firms, suggesting that the union hiring pipeline, while still strained, provides a structural advantage in workforce supply.
For anyone putting a project together, that gap is a schedule question. Crews that cannot be filled are dates that cannot be held.
Training and Career Pathways
One of the most significant advantages associated with union labor is the structure of its apprenticeship and training programs. Union training programs combine classroom instruction with paid, on-the-job learning, typically spanning three to four years, with apprentices earning progressively higher wages as they advance. These programs operate under joint labor-management oversight, establishing consistent quality standards across regions and trades.
In 2024 and 2025, many union training centers expanded their curricula to include coursework in renewable energy systems and digital project management, areas where the industry sees growing demand and where workers without current credentials may face barriers to employment.
This is the part of the union system that gets the least attention and does the most work. Every journeyman on a jobsite came up through somebody’s training program. A shortage of two million skilled workers does not get solved by recruiting harder. It gets solved by training people, which takes years and costs money before it returns any.
Federal Policy and Project Labor Agreements
Federal policy has historically shaped the demand for union labor on large public projects. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and prior clean energy investment programs continued to fuel large-scale projects that often incentivize or require union labor. On federal contracts exceeding $35 million, project labor agreements have at various points been mandated under federal acquisition rules, a policy that has been subject to ongoing legal and political debate.
A Workforce at a Crossroads
The construction workforce itself is changing. ADP Research found that since 2020, the median age of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and HVAC professionals has dropped by as much as five years, compared to just one year across other industries, a sign that younger workers are entering the trades at an accelerating rate.
Where those workers end up is an open question, and it will be answered by which side of the industry offers them a career with a shape to it. Structured training, written wage progression, and benefits that hold up over a working life are not perks. They are the reason a young person picks the trades over something else.
Why Titan Works Union
For project owners, contractors, and workers navigating today’s construction labor market, the data is clear: demand for skilled tradespeople significantly outpaces supply, wages are rising across the board, and both union and non-union sectors are competing aggressively for the same shrinking pool of qualified workers.
Titan’s position in that market is straightforward. We work union because the men and women who put steel in the air deserve the wages, the benefits, and the standards that come with a collective bargaining agreement, and because the training system behind that agreement is what keeps qualified people entering the trade at all.
That commitment is not a marketing position. It is who we work with, and it does not change with the job.
Sources
- Metal Construction News, Only 11 Percent of Construction Workers Are Unionized: ABC, February 2026
- Labor Notes, Unions Held the Line in 2025 Membership Numbers, February 2026
- Points North, The Employer’s Guide to Union Construction Work in 2026, March 2026
- ABLEMKR, Union vs Non-Union: Hiring Trends in Construction 2025, November 2025
- Lumber, Union vs Non-Union Construction Payroll in 2026: Key Differences, December 2025
- amtec.co, U.S. Construction Workforce Data & Benchmarks (2025–2026), May 2026
- ADP, The HR Trends Shaping the Construction Industry in 2026, March 2026