What America Is Building in 2026 — and Where the Work Is
Commercial construction is not moving in one direction. Data centers are surging. Healthcare is still growing. Manufacturing remains historically busy but has cooled from its peak. Warehouses and traditional offices are softer. For commercial trade contractors, the national total matters less than what is being built in the markets they serve.
Updated September 30, 2026. This article now uses the latest DibDirt production project snapshot and the live trade-visibility map.
What DibDirt can actually see right now
This is a snapshot of DibDirt's own production project store as of September 30, 2026. It is not a forecast and it is not a construction-spending estimate. It shows the commercial project records DibDirt has actually collected and classified from its live public-source network.
How to read this map: darker blue means DibDirt currently holds more project records for the selected trade. Gray means DibDirt has production source coverage but no current stored project records in this snapshot. Hover a state to see the actual record count, number of live source systems, and reported project value where the source provides it. Project-value totals are incomplete by design because many public sources do not publish value.
Current DibDirt snapshot: 7,447 state-tagged project records are represented across all 50 states / D.C. in this October 1 production snapshot. Every state now has at least one current stored project record in this article's map dataset. Coverage depth still varies by state and source availability.
What is popping in the current DibDirt data?
The strongest current signal in DibDirt's project store is electrical-relevant work: 2,898 electrical records appear across 41 states / D.C. HVAC follows with 2,476 records across 41 states / D.C., and plumbing appears in 1,971 records across 34 states / D.C.
The largest overall record concentrations are in Texas, California, Florida, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, D.C., Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana. Alaska and Delaware now appear with current official HVAC-relevant public procurement notices. That does not mean those states are the only active construction markets. It means DibDirt's current live-source network is deepest there and is producing the strongest project signal there right now.
By trade, the picture shifts. HVAC signal is strongest in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon, and D.C. Plumbing signal is strongest in California, New York, Texas, D.C., Florida, Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. Electrical signal is strongest in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, Louisiana, Oregon, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
The national number hides the real story
Through August, U.S. nonresidential construction starts were up 23.4% from the same period in 2025, according to Dodge Construction Network. But August itself fell sharply after a July surge in megaprojects. A few very large projects can swing the headline number.
The AIA's July forecast tells the same story another way. It expects total nonresidential building spending to slip 0.3% in 2026, while commercial spending rises 4.8%. Almost all of that commercial strength comes from data centers. Without data centers, AIA says commercial spending would be down about 1%.
Data centers are changing the map
AIA's consensus forecast calls for data-center construction spending to rise 33% in 2026 and another 24.7% in 2027. Pew found that Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Arizona have the largest planned pipelines in its state table. Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Iowa also show substantial planned activity.
The geography is changing too. Pew found that 75% of planned U.S. data centers are in the South and Midwest, and 67% are planned for rural areas. Large campuses can bring major electrical demand, cooling systems, backup power, water questions, utility work and supporting construction into markets that were not traditional data-center hubs.
Manufacturing is cooling, not disappearing
Manufacturing construction is coming off an extraordinary run. AIA expects spending to fall 11.6% this year after a 6.7% decline in 2025. The important context: activity remains high by historical standards. Semiconductor, battery and advanced manufacturing projects created a much higher base than contractors were used to before the recent boom.
Healthcare keeps grinding forward
Healthcare is one of the steadier parts of the market. AIA forecasts healthcare construction spending up 2.6% in 2026 and 4.4% in 2027. Hospitals, outpatient facilities and other care buildings also tend to carry dense MEP requirements, making the category important even when its growth rate looks modest.
Some familiar markets are still soft
Warehouse construction is forecast to fall another 1.7% in 2026 before modest growth returns in 2027. Traditional office spending is also expected to decline. Retail is roughly flat, while hotels are showing better momentum. Education remains steady nationally, but AIA expects more new construction in faster-growing Sunbelt and other Southern and Western states, with slower-growth areas leaning more toward renovation and rehabilitation.
Three trade lenses
HVAC: Data centers are the obvious growth story, but healthcare, hotels, recreation projects and renovations can create substantial mechanical work without making national headlines.
Electrical: Data centers sit at the center of the current growth cycle. Their power needs can extend beyond the building into substations, generation, backup systems and grid upgrades. Manufacturing remains another large market even as spending cools.
Plumbing: Healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality and institutional work remain important. Data centers can also create plumbing and piping scope depending on cooling design, water use and campus infrastructure.
The takeaway
2026 is not a broad construction boom. It is a selective one. The strongest opportunities are clustering by project type and geography. The useful question is no longer simply, “Is construction up?” It is: what is being built in my territory right now?
That is the question DibDirt is built to answer at the project level. Fresh commercial project intelligence is filtered by trade and territory and delivered daily, with an included exportable CRM for the opportunities worth pursuing.