WORKFORCE INTELLIGENCE LAB · Construction Labor Shortage Index · Updated 2026-06-05

Construction labor shortage in Washington.

How tight is construction hiring in Washington? AlphaHire normalizes open construction roles against the state's population to measure demand against the available workforce — not raw job-post volume.

56/100 Tightening pressure #23 of 51 states 3.96 posts / 100k residents
56
Open Role Pressure Index
+9 vs national avg
#23
National rank
of 51 states
4.0
Posts per 100k residents
Population-normalized
309
Construction job posts
Tracked in Washington
The reading

What 56/100 means for hiring in Washington.

Washington ranks #23 of 51 for construction hiring pressure, with an Open Role Pressure Index of 56 — above the national reading of 47. Employers posted 309 construction roles in Washington, or 3.96 per 100,000 residents. The market is balanced but trending toward scarcity. Specific trades are already tight even where the headline is moderate.

The heaviest demand is concentrated in Civil / Infrastructure, Mechanical / HVAC, Project Managers. Because this index normalizes by population, it surfaces where the open-role burden is heaviest relative to the people available to fill it — a different and more operationally useful signal than which states simply post the most jobs.

Demand by role family

Where Washington's construction hiring is concentrated.

Civil / Infrastructure
35
Mechanical / HVAC
33
Project Managers
29
Commissioning
26
Superintendents
21

Construction job posts in Washington by role family, from AlphaHire's job-posting dataset. Counts are directional and refreshed continuously.

Methodology

How the index is built.

The Construction Labor Shortage Index is a directional workforce-intelligence product from the AlphaHire Workforce Intelligence Lab. U.S. construction job postings are deduplicated, classified by construction relevance, assigned to a state, and normalized against the latest U.S. Census resident-population estimates:

open_roles_per_100k = construction_job_posts / state_population × 100,000

Every state's value is percentile-ranked into a 0–100 Hiring Competition Index and classified by severity: Critical (85–100), Severe (75–84), Elevated (60–74), Tightening (45–59), Manageable (below 45). Built on a 3,743,416-row job-posting dataset; 12,452 U.S. construction roles classified.

Compare

Adjacent states by pressure.

Hiring construction leadership in Washington?

Where applicant pressure is this tight, inbound applications won't fill the role. Tell us the role and market — we'll read the local talent pool and bring the candidates.