The Market Looks Frozen. It Isn’t. Here’s Where GC Professionals Are Actually Moving.

February 2026 recorded the slowest construction hiring rate in modern history.

Job openings across the US construction sector dropped to roughly 202,000. Fewer people are being hired, fewer are quitting, and fewer are being let go. On paper, it looks like the market has seized up entirely.

If you’re a GC professional, a project manager, superintendent, estimator, or pre-construction lead, and you’ve been watching this and thinking the timing is wrong to make a move, I want to challenge that read.



Because the headline figure is accurate, but the conclusion most people draw from it isn’t. A frozen labour market and a market with no opportunity are two very different things. What’s actually happening is more nuanced, and understanding it properly is the difference between sitting still for another year and making a move that accelerates your career.

What the data actually says

According to Associated Builders and Contractors’ analysis of federal JOLTS data, the record-low hiring rate reflects low churn across the board. Workers aren’t quitting in large numbers, which means firms aren’t replacing people at the rate they were two or three years ago. That suppresses the headline job opening number significantly.

But low churn doesn’t mean no movement. What it actually means is that the opportunities which do exist are more targeted, more deliberate, and in many cases better compensated than the reactive hiring that dominated the market in 2022 and 2023. Firms aren’t hiring to fill gaps left by constant turnover. They’re hiring when they genuinely need a specific capability, when they win a project that requires a particular kind of leadership, or when a competitor firm has made an approach and they need to respond.

Those are the moves worth making. And they’re happening consistently, just not loudly.

The Associated General Contractors of America’s 2026 outlook paints a picture that’s more complex than the hiring rate suggests. While overall sentiment has softened, demand in specific sectors remains genuinely strong. Data centre construction carries a net positive outlook of 57 percentage points, the highest of any category and up sharply from 42 points in 2025. Power infrastructure, semiconductor fabrication, and healthcare construction are all maintaining positive trajectories. For GC professionals with experience in any of these sectors, the market is not frozen at all.

Where GC professionals are moving right now

The firms gaining ground in 2026 are not spread evenly across the market. They’re concentrated in a small number of high-growth sectors, and they’re competing hard for the people who can deliver in those environments.



ConstructConnect’s April 2026 Construction Economy Brief is striking on this point. Nonresidential construction starts are up approximately 80% year on year. Mega-projects over $1 billion are up more than 500% year to date. The firms managing those projects, the GCs and construction managers with data centre, advanced manufacturing, and large-scale infrastructure in their portfolios, are actively building their senior leadership teams. Project executives, senior project managers, and pre-construction directors with relevant sector experience are in genuine demand.

Texas specifically remains one of the most active markets in the country. Samsung’s Taylor campus, ongoing data centre development across the Austin-Dallas corridor, and continued infrastructure investment are all generating demand for experienced GC professionals. The Birmingham Group’s 2026 outlook identifies Austin as one of the cities seeing the fastest growth in commercial and tech-driven builds, with project managers and engineers earning 15 to 20% above market rate in some cases.

Beyond the headline sectors, ConstructConnect identifies an additional $32 billion in construction opportunity spread across eight nonresidential and civil subcategories that are growing at healthy rates, including airport terminal expansions, military construction, and public infrastructure projects funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. GC professionals with civil or public sector backgrounds should not assume the opportunity is exclusively in data centres.

Why the workforce gap is your advantage

Here is the part of this market that doesn’t get discussed enough in the context of candidate opportunity.

According to CIC Construction, the construction industry needs approximately 499,000 additional workers in 2026, with roughly 41% of the current workforce projected to retire by 2031. At the senior end, the supply of experienced GC project managers, superintendents, and pre-construction professionals is genuinely constrained. Firms with strong backlogs in growth sectors need experienced leadership on those projects. They can’t manufacture it quickly and they can’t replace it with technology.

What that means in practice is that if you’re an experienced GC professional with a track record of delivering complex projects, you have more leverage in a salary and package negotiation than the headline hiring figures might lead you to believe. The firms that are performing well know exactly what experienced people cost them to replace. They also know that replacing a project manager mid-project is not just an HR inconvenience, it’s a genuine delivery risk. That knowledge shifts the dynamic in your favour when the conversation turns to compensation, progression, or flexibility.



The AGC notes that immigration enforcement has added further strain, with one third of firms reporting direct or indirect workforce impacts. The firms most exposed to that strain are the ones most actively looking for experienced, credential-led GC professionals who can step into senior roles quickly.

What a smart move looks like in this market

Moving for the sake of it is never a good idea, and in a low-churn market it carries more risk than usual. If you move to the wrong firm and it doesn’t work out, you’re re-entering a market that isn’t generating replacement opportunities at the pace it was two years ago.

So the question to ask before any move is: what is the quality of this firm’s backlog, and is it concentrated in sectors that will still be growing in two to three years?

A firm with a strong data centre, healthcare, or infrastructure pipeline is genuinely well positioned in 2026 and beyond. A firm heavily weighted toward speculative commercial development in markets where financing is still tight is a different conversation. Construction Dive is direct about this: the industry’s numbers have weakened outside the AI and data centre buildout, and firms without exposure to those growth sectors are in a more fragile position.



Beyond pipeline, look at the culture around project delivery. Firms that self-perform a significant portion of their work tend to have more control over schedules and quality, and more stable employment for their senior people. According to Westside Construction Group’s analysis of DPR’s model, DPR maintains over 5,000 self-perform workers specifically to reduce dependency on subcontractor availability. That kind of structural investment in workforce stability is worth asking about before you sign anything.

The move worth making

The construction labour market in 2026 is not an exciting place to be if you’re looking at the top-line numbers. But top-line numbers rarely tell the full story at the individual level.

If you’re an experienced GC professional with a strong project delivery record and sector experience that aligns with where capital is actually flowing, you are not in a frozen market. You’re in a selective one. The opportunity is there. It’s just requiring more precision to find it than it did in 2022 when every firm was hiring everything.

That precision is exactly what a good recruitment conversation should give you. If you want an honest, informed view of where your experience sits in the current market and what a move could realistically look like, I’m always happy to have that conversation.