The (Almost) Daily Brief

Construction Adds 22,000 Jobs in August

By Megan Dayton · 9/4/2026

WORKFORCE  Workforce shortages are the leading reported cause of construction project delays. The Associated General Contractors of America and NCCER released their 2026 workforce survey on Sept. 3, drawing 1,830 responses. Labor shortages delayed projects at 42 percent of firms, ahead of every other cause. Craft openings ran at 87 percent of firms and salaried openings at 82 percent. Among firms with openings, 89 percent called those jobs as hard or harder to fill than a year ago, and half said available candidates lack the skills or credentials the work requires. Electricians were the hardest craft to fill at 81 percent, with superintendents next at 75 percent. Data-center work reached 28 percent of respondents, and 58 percent of those firms reported greater competition for skilled workers. Immigration enforcement touched 29 percent of firms, ranging from 42 percent in the South to 17 percent in the Midwest. Hiring plans held up anyway, with 73 percent expecting to add staff over the coming year even after 37 percent cut headcount by at least 5 percent in the past 12 months. AGC chief economist Ken Simonson said many contractors “continue to compete for a limited supply of qualified workers.”

Sources: Engineering News-Record, Sept. 3; Associated General Contractors, Sept. 3

POLICY  A federal appeals board halted the first data center approved for U.S. public land. The Interior Board of Land Appeals granted a stay on Sept. 1 in consolidated appeals brought by Boulder City, Nevada, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club. The order blocks a June 26 Bureau of Land Management decision record that amended a right-of-way to let Townsite Solar 2 LLC build a 167-megawatt, $3 billion data center on BLM land near Boulder City. The board found the appellants likely to succeed on the merits because BLM cleared the data center on a determination of NEPA adequacy that reused the environmental assessment prepared for a solar farm on the same ground. Administrative Judge David Gunter wrote that such a determination is not a NEPA document and cannot supply new site-specific effects analysis, and that the solar assessment never addressed the data center’s longer construction period, operating noise, water use, or air-cooling emissions. BLM must file the administrative record by Sept. 21, and the parties must propose an expedited briefing schedule by the same day.

Sources: Engineering News-Record, Sept. 3; Interior Board of Land Appeals order, IBLA 2026-0213 and 2026-0216, Sept. 1

ENG  Two rural highway roundabouts open in Minnesota this week. MnDOT reopens the Highway 212 and Highway 15 intersection near Brownton today, pulling the detour by 5 p.m. The $3.5 million project built the roundabout and resurfaced the adjacent Highway 15 railroad crossing, with Midwest Contracting as the contractor. South of Montgomery, the Highway 13 and Highway 99 roundabout opens by 7 p.m. on Sept. 8, ending a detour that has run since June 1. That $3 million project adds lighting and drainage upgrades, with a snow fence going in this fall, and BCM Construction is the contractor. MnDOT puts the safety case at a reduction of up to 90 percent in fatal crashes and roughly 75 percent in injury crashes. Neither release names a design consultant.

Sources: MnDOT, Sept. 3; MnDOT, Sept. 4

BIZ  The price gap between land-based wind and solar is the widest on record. The American Clean Power Association’s second-quarter market report puts land-based wind power-purchase agreements at $83.79 per megawatt-hour, up 5.5 percent on the quarter and 17.5 percent on the year. Solar sits at $61.40, down 4.8 percent on the quarter. The $22.39 spread works out to 36 percent, the largest the association has recorded. The land-based wind pipeline shrank 4 percent even as the combined clean-power pipeline passed 200 gigawatts, an 11 percent gain over the year. Another 44 gigawatts of wind capacity sits in Department of Defense review. ACP senior vice president John Hensley said “PJM remains a major bottleneck” for moving clean power nationally.

Source: Utility Dive, Sept. 3

POLICY  CISA is retiring six free cybersecurity assessments for critical-infrastructure operators. Agency staff were told at an Aug. 25 meeting to stop performing them. The six are the Cyber Resilience Review, the Cyber Resilience Essentials survey, the Ransomware Readiness Assessment, the Incident Management Review, the External Dependencies Management Assessment, and the Cyber Infrastructure Survey. CISA’s Chris Butera said the agency is retiring “some legacy questionnaire assessments” that duplicate its Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals, and operators are being pointed to the goals questionnaire instead. The Cyber Security Evaluation Tool stays available, though newer versions turn off the retired functions. The reviews were used across critical-infrastructure sectors, water and energy utilities among them. Michael Daniel of the Cyber Threat Alliance said “the end result will likely be an increase in the nation’s overall cyber risk.” Systems that relied on the free reviews now buy the equivalent work or run it in-house.

Source: Utility Dive, Sept. 3

The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading. 

Browse past editions or subscribe →