From Service to Site

The challenge

Veterans are among the most underemployed professionals in the American workforce. Close to two thirds report working jobs that fall well below their actual skills, experience, and leadership capability within the first five years of leaving the service. The military did not produce undertrained people. The civilian workforce has simply not figured out how to read them.

The reason

The core of the problem is translation. A Staff Sergeant managing 30 people, accountable for millions of dollars in equipment, and making consequential decisions under pressure does not stop being that person when he hands in his uniform. But a one page civilian resume has no vocabulary for it, and most HR departments have no framework to recognize it. The title means nothing to them. The experience underneath it is invisible.

Credentialing compounds it. Military training is genuinely world class, but it rarely arrives with civilian certificates attached. A combat medic performing procedures that rival a physician’s assistant in the field still cannot walk into a clinical role without civilian licensure. The capability is real. The paperwork is not. That gap costs both the Veteran and the employer.

Culture shock does the rest. The military runs on clear hierarchy, defined mission, and individual accountability. Many Veterans enter corporate environments and find ambiguity where there should be direction, politics where there should be standards, and a pace that feels untethered from consequence. The frustration is legitimate. The job hopping it produces looks like instability on a resume. It is not. It is a signal that the fit was wrong, not that the person was.

The fix

The solution is not complicated, even if it takes commitment. Structured credential translation programs, employer education on reading military resumes, targeted hiring pipelines in industries where Veteran skills land naturally, and mentorship connections into construction, logistics, cybersecurity, transportation, and leadership roles. These are not charity initiatives. They are a talent strategy. The employers who build this infrastructure first will have access to a pipeline their competitors cannot see.

Why construction

Construction can be a great fit, and not just for the earning potential. Construction teams are deeply mission driven, just like those in the military — helping create incredible buildings and adding real value to the economy. There is a tangible outcome to the work, something you can point to and say I built that. It is even fair to say that walking into a jobsite trailer can be a bit reminiscent of walking into a command post in a forward operating base.

These three numbers tell the whole story. The construction industry has a structural workforce crisis. The U.S. military produces over 200,000 disciplined, mission-ready people every year who are actively looking for civilian careers. The barrier between them is not capability. It is translation and structure, both of which are solvable. This report tells you how.

The problem: unfilled construction jobs

December 2025: end of year snapshot

The number of open, unfilled construction sector jobs rose to 292,000 in December 2025, up from 284,000 in November. This represented 3.4% of all construction jobs going unfilled in the final month of the year, per Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS data.

Year-over-year comparison

The December 2025 figure of 292,000 was notably higher than the 205,000 recorded in December 2024, a year-over-year increase of approximately 42%. The job openings rate also ticked up from 3.2% to 3.4%. However, the reading remains measurably lower than two years prior, reflecting the broader cooling trend in construction activity, particularly in residential.

2025 intra-year volatility

The industry experienced significant swings throughout 2025. In August, job openings plunged to just 188,000, the lowest rate in nearly a decade, down 115,000 from July and down 116,000 from August 2024. The sharp mid-year decline aligned with a pullback in construction spending and residential activity before recovering in Q4.

Broader context and headwinds

• Fewer construction workers were hired in 2024 and 2025 combined than in any two-year period since 2015–2016.
• Demand for construction workers remained subdued for several consecutive quarters.
• Layoffs edged up modestly from 1.7% to 2.1% in December, per AGC data.
• Tariffs, rising materials costs, increased insurance expenses, and immigration enforcement contributed to labor pressure and wage increases.
• Home building employment declined in the second half of 2025, though non-residential sectors — notably data centers — expanded.

2026 outlook

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) projects that construction will need 350,000 net new workers to meet demand in 2026 — a significant gap, though smaller than in prior years. The workforce deficit remains structural, driven by an aging labor pool, underinvestment in vocational training, and immigration-related constraints on the skilled trades pipeline.

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS; National Association of Home Builders (NAHB); Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC); Associated General Contractors of America (AGC); Construction Dive.

The opportunity

Each year, over 200,000 service members separate from the U.S. military and begin looking for civilian careers. They have spent years being trained and tested in exactly the qualities construction most needs:

Veterans are not charity cases. They are candidates who have been selected, trained, and tested in ways that most civilian hiring processes cannot replicate. The industry is leaving them, and the solution to its workforce problem, on the table.

The transition is not always smooth. Around 40 to 75% of separating service members report some difficulty adjusting to civilian life. The primary barrier is translation: Veterans struggle to frame their experience in civilian terms, and most construction HR teams do not know how to read a military resume. That gap is entirely solvable with the right tools, which are provided in the appendices to this report.

How to build a program that works

Start at the top, not the jobsite

The most important structural lesson: Veteran hiring programs cannot be driven at the project level. By the time a workforce partner engages with a project site, the team is already in place. There is no budget headroom, no open roles, and no appetite to onboard someone mid-stream.

Effective programs are built and sold at the enterprise level, with COOs, VPs of HR, and Workforce Development leads who have the authority to commit across multiple projects and measure success over a twelve to twenty-four-month horizon. The project placement is the mechanism. The enterprise relationship is the product.

The three-phase model

Voyage Control’s Veteran hiring program provides a practical model built around the enterprise approach:

Training program from industry for Veterans

A phased development program driven and supported by the collective industry leaders in support of Veterans entering the construction industry will materially improve outcomes. A structure that intentionally rotates veterans through document management, risk and safety management, and project management, anchored to real project responsibilities and clear milestones, would accelerate integration, build technical credibility, and deliver earlier project value while reducing attrition risk. An example training program might look like the following, as suggested by a client:

Map the rank to the role

Veterans should not be treated as interchangeable. A Staff Sergeant who managed a 12-person team and $2M in equipment in a hostile environment is not an entry-level candidate. Use rank and MOS to set the right entry point:

Full Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) code to role mappings by branch are in Appendix C. The rank-to-role matrix is in Appendix B.

Do not overlook disabled Veterans or military spouses

Veterans with service-connected disabilities

Veterans with service-connected physical disabilities are an overlooked pool of talented and disciplined workforce members. These Veterans might be limited in field work due to safety considerations and regulations, but within the construction management, logistics and supply chain management roles, these Veterans could excel. Additional roles in drone operations, BIM and VDC coordination, remote site monitoring, estimating, and safety compliance are all high-value roles that can be structured to match a disabled Veteran’s specific capabilities.

Disability is a design challenge, not a disqualifier.

Military spouses

Military spouses represent a second largely overlooked talent pool. Based on recent Department of War (DOW) statistics, there are approximately one million military spouses in the global U.S. military community. Military spouses face a roughly 20% unemployment rate, which is four times the national average. This figure has remained statistically unchanged since 2015 according to a 2026 DOW report.

In January 2026, the Military Spouse Career Accelerator Pilot became a permanent Career Accelerator program, a long-term, fully funded pathway into portable, high-demand careers. Nearly 40% of employed spouses now report having remote work options, and 64% have flexible scheduling. Reasons cited for this high unemployment rate are driven entirely by structural factors such as frequent relocations, credential portability barriers, and resume gaps that civilian employers routinely misread.

Military spouses bring exceptional adaptability, organizational capability, and cultural fluency. They present an exceptional talent pool for, but not limited to, roles in project administration, accounting, HR, marketing, and technology. Roles in the traditional trades that support the construction industry are also roles that some military spouses might choose as well, as this allows for roles that can be transported to new assignment locations addressing the transportability challenge. This is a talent pool of highly qualified candidates who your competitors are not hiring.

The contracting angle

Veteran hiring is not just a workforce strategy. It is also a contracting strategy.

The FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act raised the federal government’s Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) spending goal from 3% to 5% of all prime and subcontract dollars, a 67% increase in targeted opportunity. In FY2023, federal agencies already reached that level, awarding approximately $31.9 billion to SDVOSBs. GCs on federal contracts can count subcontract awards to certified SDVOSBs toward their socioeconomic subcontracting goals.

Critically, Veteran focused contracting programs are on more stable legal and political ground than broader MWBE and DBE frameworks, which have faced mounting legal scrutiny since the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling. The SDVOSB framework has bipartisan Congressional support and has recently been strengthened, not weakened.

GCs who invest in Veteran hiring today are also seeding the pipeline of qualified SDVOSB subcontractors they will need tomorrow. Veterans who gain skills, credentials, and industry relationships through employment programs are well-positioned to launch their own contracting firms.

Note: as of December 22, 2024, only SBA VetCert-certified businesses count toward SDVOSB goals. Self-certification is no longer accepted.

Seven things to do now

1. Build a translation framework. Train HR and operations staff to read military resumes using the MOS to role mappings in Appendix C and the task translation table in Appendix A. Without this foundation, every other step fails.
2. Engage at the enterprise level. Assign a Workforce Development lead or COO level sponsor to own the Veteran hiring program. Do not delegate this to individual project teams.
3. Start with logistics. The logistics superintendent role is the ideal entry point. It maps directly to Veteran competencies and provides a structured environment to build construction-specific knowledge.
4. Build mentoring from day one. Pair every incoming Veteran with an experienced superintendent or project manager. Check in regularly during the first twelve months. Veterans who find the right fit tend to stay for the long term. This could potentially mirror the current very successful ACE Mentor Program of America.
5. Show them the path. Communicate clearly what a construction career looks like ten years out. Uncertainty about the future is a leading cause of early attrition.
6. Explore the SDVOSB angle. If your firm has federal contracting obligations, engage your legal and procurement teams on how a Veteran hiring program can be structured to support SDVOSB subcontracting goals.
7. Track and refine. Measure Veteran retention, promotion rates, and performance against non-Veteran hires. Build the evidence base and improve the program over time.

Conclusion

The construction industry’s workforce problem and the Veteran community’s transition challenge are mirror images of each other. One has exactly what the other needs. The barrier between them is not insurmountable. It is a translation problem and a structural commitment problem, and both are within your control to fix.

The over 200,000 service members who leave the military every year are not waiting for the construction industry to figure this out. They are finding other careers. The companies that act now will have a meaningful and durable talent advantage. The ones that wait will be explaining to their boards why the workforce gap keeps growing.

The appendices that follow contain the detailed reference tools needed to put this framework into practice: military task to construction task translation, rank to role mapping, MOS to career equivalents by branch, and a full construction career path framework.

Appendices: the reference tables

The four reference tools below are the practical half of this report. Each is a page of its own so it can be bookmarked, linked and shared on its own terms.

Acknowledgements

This report was developed by Voyage Control, drawing on our experience working alongside clients across the U.S. construction industry. We are grateful to the organizations whose collaboration, feedback, and shared commitment to military workforce development helped shape the thinking in this document. We also acknowledge the service of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, and their families, whose commitment and sacrifice this report seeks to honor.

• Skanska USA Building
• Gilbane Building Company
• HDR, Inc
• Construction Industry Round Table