the initiative
What is Design Demands Labor?
Design Demands Labor is a nonpartisan initiative that helps architects, engineers, contractors, and landscape professionals talk plainly about labor shortages—and honor the essential role immigrant workers have played in building America’s infrastructure. We treat workforce stability as a Health, Safety, and Welfare issue that affects every project.
Why is this important now?
The construction and landscape industries are running on thin crews. The workforce is aging, fewer young people are entering the trades, and workforce participation hasn’t recovered to pre-2020 levels. By 2030, the industry faces a gap of millions of skilled trades positions. If current deportation and enforcement pressures continue, that gap will hit hard: delays, higher costs, compromised safety, and projects that don’t open on time.
Is this a political initiative?
No. This is a professional and technical initiative focused on project delivery, public safety, and community outcomes. We approach workforce stability as a core project condition—not as a partisan issue, but as a practical reality that affects housing, schools, parks, and infrastructure.
About the Workforce
How big is immigrant labor in the construction industry?
Immigrant workers make up about 1 in 4 of all U.S. construction workers, and nearly 1 in 3 construction tradespeople. In states like California and Texas, that share rises to 40-41%. In major metros like Miami, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C., immigrant workers make up more than half of the construction workforce.
Haven’t immigrant workers always been part of construction?
Yes. Immigrant labor has been part of the blueprint for generations. In the 19th century, Chinese and Irish laborers laid the transcontinental railroad. Irish-majority crews built the Brooklyn Bridge. Italian, Irish, and Eastern European immigrants built the New York City skyline in the early 1900s. Today, immigrant crews continue to anchor construction and landscape teams across the country.
Which trades rely most heavily on immigrant workers?
Some of the most critical on-the-ground roles are heavily immigrant-dominated:
- Plasterers and drywall installers: over 59% foreign-born
- Roofers: more than 43% foreign-born
- Painters: more than 40% foreign-born
- Construction laborers: more than 1 in 3 foreign-born
- Carpenters: about 28% foreign-born
These are the crews framing homes, installing roofing, pouring concrete, and finishing walls—the roles contractors and homeowners feel most directly when they’re missing.
About Project Impacts
What happens when labor shortages hit projects?
Labor shortages are already the leading cause of project delays in construction. When crews are thin or missing, projects face:
- Schedule slippage of months on routine housing and public-works projects
- Cost increases from 10% to 20% or more where emergency labor and overtime kick in
- Safety concerns when less-experienced or overstretched workers fill gaps
- Deferred maintenance on roads, water systems, and stormwater infrastructure
How does this affect homeowners and communities?
For homeowners: homes delayed or priced out of reach. For communities: parks, streetscapes, and green infrastructure delayed or built with less-experienced crews. Public-works projects get deferred, stretching maintenance backlogs and delaying investments in schools, housing, and climate-resilient infrastructure.
What’s the economic cost?
Labor shortages and absentee workers are costing the construction and housing sectors billions of dollars a year in delays, higher costs, and lost production. One recent study estimated that the skilled labor shortage in home building alone creates an aggregate economic impact of more than $10 billion per year, including thousands of homes that never get built.
About Workforce Stability
What’s causing the workforce shortage?
Three structural factors:
- Aging workforce: The average U.S. construction worker is about 42, and workforce participation has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels—leaving roughly 1.7 million fewer workers available nationally.
- Weak recruitment: Fewer high-schoolers and young adults are entering the trades, and training pipelines haven’t kept pace with demand.
- Enforcement pressures: Deportation policies and workplace enforcement are driving workers to stay home, avoid jobsites, or leave the industry altogether—thinning already-stretched crews.
How many workers will the industry need?
Analysts estimate the U.S. will need about 650,000–725,000 construction and extraction workers each year through the mid-2030s just to replace workers who retire or leave the field. That’s more than 2 million new hires needed over just 2024–2026 to keep up with expected turnover.
What does “absentee workers” mean?
Enforcement actions and fear of deportation are causing workers to stay home, avoid jobsites, or leave the industry entirely. This absenteeism hits hardest where crews are already thinnest: grading, concrete, framing, and landscape installation.
How To Get Involved
Who can join Design Demands Labor?
We welcome architects, landscape architects, engineers, contractors, and allied design and construction professionals who want to normalize workforce stability as part of project conversations. Whether you work on housing, public infrastructure, or private developments, your voice matters.
What does participation look like?
You can:
- Share your own stories about how labor shortages have affected your projects
- Adapt our language for reports, bids, public meetings, and education sessions
- Host a conversation in your firm, chapter, or jurisdiction
- Help normalize treating immigrant workers as part of the built environment’s human infrastructure