Can your best hire this year ALREADY be on your payroll?

I recently spent some time digging into the 2026 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook that the Associated General Contractors of America put out earlier this year with Sage. The numbers confirm what many contractors in America are feeling in their bones every single day.

The Challenge

More than eighty percent of contractors say they cannot fill the positions they need, and that is the worst it has been in three years. Even more telling, almost half of all firms admitted they had jobs delayed last year because they simply did not have the people to do the work.

That’s wild. Almost half the industry is losing jobs not because of price, not because of weather, not because of materials, but because they cannot put enough qualified hands on the work.

The Impact

Many contractors I talk to are stuck in the same loop. They are running ragged trying to hire their way out of the problem. They post jobs and nobody applies. They pay more and still cannot find good people. They lower their standards just to get warm bodies on the truck or behind the tools and then they wonder why projects are slipping, quality is dropping, and their getting calls from clients that should never be happening in the first place.

So is the workforce problem more aligned with a possible development problem that’s dressed up like a hiring problem. We do have less people getting into the business, but when they do choose the construction path, we MUST maximize their potential. Or else the contractors who keep chasing new hires are going to be in this same conversation five years from now, and they will still be losing.

The Shift

This is where I want to push you to think differently because this is the conversation I have every week. 

Stop looking outside your four walls for the answer. The answer is already standing in your shop, sitting in your on site trailers, and walking your jobsites right now. The people you already have are your single greatest opportunity, and most contractors are completely wasting them. They hire someone, hand them a hard hat, give them a quick rundown of the company policies, and then expect them to figure it out on the job by osmosis. That is not training, it’s just hoping for the best. 

Real training is intentional. It is structured. It is built around the role that person plays, whether they are a field engineer, a foreman, a superintendent, a PM, or an estimator. It teaches them how to think, how to make decisions, how to communicate up and down the chain, and how to actually move the needle for your company. When you train your people on purpose, three things happen. They get better at their job, they stick around longer because they feel valued, and they start producing at a level that the new hire down the street will never touch.

I hear the same pushback many times I bring this up. What if I train them and they leave? I get it, that fear is real, and I have lived it myself. But let me flip it on you. What if you do not train them and they stay? That is the scenario that should actually get you thinking harder about this topic. Untrained people staying on your payroll for ten years cost you more in mistakes, rework, missed opportunities, and lost profit than any training program could ever cost you. The math is not even close.

The contractors who are going to come out on top of this workforce crisis (which isn’t going away anytime soon) are the ones who stop trying to win the hiring war and start winning the development war. They are building their own talent from within. They are creating people other companies want to steal, and most of the time, those people will not leave because nobody is going to invest in them the way you already have.

The Closing

You cannot control how many workers will enter the industry next year. You cannot control what your competitors pay or what the labor market does. But you can absolutely control how well you develop the people who have already chosen to work for you. That is the only lever in this whole conversation that is fully in your hands, and it is the one most contractors are not pulling.

If you want to dig deeper into what intentional training actually looks like inside a construction company, reply and let us get on a free training strategy call together.

Gerard Aliberti
Pro-Accel, Owner

Ways We Can Work Together

Role Specific Training Bootcamps  — Pro-Accel now offers role-specific training workshops for Estimators, PMs, Superintendents, and Field Engineers focused on accountability, decision-making, and ownership. Reply if you want to talk about your team.

Bid Handoff Accelerator Process — A structured handoff system that closes the gap between estimating and field execution, dramatically improving project success.

Consulting & Strategic Advisory  — From organizational assessments to strategic planning and leadership development, we dig into how your business actually operates, identify where the breakdowns are happening, and build the systems and structure that drive real growth.