The same shortage. Six very different problems.
The constraint is the same everywhere: the country has not built the craft workforce its capital plans assume. What differs by sector is the schedule it breaks, the credential it turns on, and the basin it drains. The examples below are illustrative of how we read each one.
LNG & Gas Infrastructure
Where our record is deepest.
Multi-train liquefaction buildouts run to tens of millions of tonnes per annum across complexes measured in hundreds of acres, on schedules where a single craft shortfall moves a commissioning date. Peak manning is enormous, the basins are thin, and the window is unforgiving.
Workers mobilized under program on a U.S. Gulf Coast LNG export facility, one of the largest liquefaction buildouts in the country.
ECP program data.
Families reached through that program, at an average household of 3.5.
See The 9,527 for the full methodology.
Scale details on this engagement (project name, exact liquefaction capacity, and site acreage) are under client confidentiality and are not published without written permission.
Manufacturing & Advanced Manufacturing
The largest segment, and the least covered.
The largest and least covered segment in U.S. industrial construction, which reached $220 billion in 2025, up 192% from 2020. Semiconductor and electronics facilities have driven the sharpest growth, and they compete for the same electrical and mechanical craft as everyone else in the region.
Power Generation & Transmission
Long schedules, aging cohort.
$158 billion in 2025, long schedules, high credentialing requirements, and a workforce concentrated in an aging cohort. The credential is the constraint: the people who hold it are leaving the trade faster than the work is arriving.
Data Centers
Fastest growth, most compressed schedules.
Fastest growth, most compressed schedules, most acute electrical craft competition. Smaller in dollars than the coverage suggests: $41 billion in 2025, roughly a fifth the size of manufacturing. But every one of those dollars is bidding for the same electricians.
Refining & Petrochemical
The purest test of mobilization.
Turnaround-driven demand with severe peak manning requirements and unforgiving windows. A turnaround does not slip; it either has the crews on the day or it pays for every day it does not. The purest test of mobilization capability there is.
Heavy Industrial & Process
Capital work the local basin was never sized for.
Long-cycle capital work in regions where the local basin was never sized for it. The project brings the demand; the workforce has to be brought with it, housed, credentialed, and kept for the life of the schedule.
Find out whether your next project can be manned.