Employment, Income, and Benefits

Foreign-born Workers

Foreign-born workers are a sizable and important component of the construction workforce. As of 2022, immigrant workers represented nearly a quarter of the employed construction workforce and nearly a third of construction trades. As the dashboard below shows, almost 4 in 5 foreign-born construction workers from 2011 to 2025 were Hispanic; this group can be explored more thoroughly in the foreign-born Hispanic worker data dashboard.

This interactive dashboard analyzes trends in foreign-born workers from 2011 to 2025 by industry, and Hispanic ethnicity. The second half of the dashboard focuses on non-Hispanic foreign-born in the industry. There is one dashboard-level filter Year and one chart-level filter Demographic, both of which will update the charts and the bolded and underlined key findings.

Following the interactive dashboard, you will find more information on the data source, definitions, chart notes, a downloadable data file, and recommended citation. This interactive data dashboard corresponds to information presented in the Construction Chart Book, 7th edition. Data will be updated annually as available. If you have any questions or comments, please email [email protected].

About the Data

Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren, Daniel Backman, Annie Chen, Grace Cooper, Stephanie Richards, Megan Schouweiler, and Michael Westberry. IPUMS CPS: Version 12.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V12.0

Definitions and Chart Notes

Definitions

  • Ethnicity – Separate from race, ethnicity is defined based on a respondent’s self-reported Hispanic origin.
  • Foreign-born workers – anyone who is not a U.S. citizen at birth. Anyone who was born in the United States, Puerto Rico, a U.S. Island Area (Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or the U.S. Virgin Islands), or abroad of a U.S. citizen parent or parents is native-born.
  • Hispanic – refers to a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, including people who reported detailed Hispanic or Latino groups, regardless of race.

 

Chart Notes

  • Due to rounding percentages shown may not sum to 100%.
Recommended Citation and Data File

Recommended Citation

CPWR-The Center for Construction Research and Training. [2026]. Foreign-born Workers [dashboard].

Data File
The Data File includes the data from the charts above on foreign-born construction workers from 2011 to 2023.