As More Women Enter the Construction Industry, Just 3% Work on Jobsites
In some metro areas, the number of women in construction trades are approaching 20%, but a sliver of that, 3%, are part of the jobsite workforce. The top three most common jobs for women to have in the construction industry are administrative positions, sales, and management, business, and finance, according to numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still, men make up the majority of sales and management, business, and finance positions. Construction Dive says roughly 1.2 million women were employed in the industry in 2019 compared to 10.2 million men. While 6.8 million men work in construction site positions, only 222,000 women do.
Despite the disparity in positions, Zang said there is an industrywide effort to attract women to both trades and professional ranks, and the momentum of those efforts has increased.
“On the trades side, there has been new attention to attracting women over the last few years as studies have shown that skilled trades will have as many as 3 million unfilled jobs by 2028,” she said.
Nationwide, women make up 10% of the construction workforce according to BLS data. Despite the gap in the number of workers, women in construction make nearly $47,000 a year, more than their nonconstruction counterparts, who make about $43,400.