The 2026 Construction Cost Report
Building material prices are up 10.1% from a year ago. Where you live still changes labor costs more than anything else. This report uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a federal agency: what building materials cost, and what construction workers earn in each state.
Materials: what's driving 2026 prices
We track 11 kinds of building materials. Over the past year, 11 went up in price and 0 went down. The biggest jump was steel mill products, up 33%. Tariffs and demand drove that rise, and it goes straight into quotes for jobs that use a lot of steel. Building material prices overall are up 10.1%. For every material, see the material price tracker.
Labor: where you live matters most
Construction workers in the U.S. earn $65,360 a year on average (2025). But pay changes a lot by state. Average pay is $48,650 in Arkansas and $84,200 in Hawaii, a 73% gap. More than any material, that gap decides whether a project costs more or less than the U.S. average. See every state in labor cost by state, or find prices near you in the cost by state guides.
What it means for homeowners
Two things to take away. First, price jumps hit some projects harder than others. Jobs that use a lot of steel, copper or roofing materials feel 2026's increases first, while drywall prices have held flat or fallen. Second, labor is the part of the bill you can't shop around for. Local pay sets it, not what materials cost. Use the calculator in any cost guide to see both for your state.
Use this report
You can republish, quote or chart this data for free. Please link back to this page. Cite it as:
Project Cost Range, "The 2026 Construction Cost Report," projectcostrange.com (2026-10-01), from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index and Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data.
Download the data as spreadsheet (CSV) files: material prices · labor by state. Have a question, or want the data broken down another way? Get in touch.
Where these numbers come from
Material figures are the change from a year earlier in the Producer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (August 2026). We leave out any price series with a sudden one-month break. Pay figures are the average yearly wage for construction and extraction jobs (the government groups building trades with mining and drilling jobs). They come from the Bureau's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (2025). See how we get our numbers. We pulled the data on October 1, 2026.