Report Reveals Impact of Skilled Labor Shortage on Homebuilding Industry

A decrease in production of thousands of newly built homes is due to a skilled labor shortage of $10.8 billion per year, according to the Home Builders Institute’s (HBI’s) recently released Fall 2025 Construction Labor Market Report.

Key findings from the report include:

• Currently, there are 3.3 million payroll residential construction workers.
• Homebuilders and remodelers lost 26,100 jobs over the last 12 months amid a job market slowdown.
• The number of women in the construction workforce is growing, reaching a 20-year high of 11.2% in 2024. This is up from 9.1% in 2017.
• The percentage of Gen Z individuals in the construction labor workforce has increased to 14.1% in 2023 from 6.4% in 2019.

The aggregate annual impact of the skilled labor shortage in the homebuilding sector is $2.663 billion in terms of higher carrying costs and $8.143 billion in terms of lost single-family homebuilding, according to an analysis from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). This represents a combined economic impact of $10.806 billion due to longer construction times associated with the lack of skilled labor.