It was not surprising to see a few women, if any, at a construction site. Women make up a tiny fraction of the United States’ skilled trades workforce. After years of attending panel discussions and conference keynotes from Autodesk, Bentley, and Trimble on women in construction and manufacturing, the narrative has largely remained the same: women are underrepresented, and the industry needs to do better.
A survey from Skillit AI, an industry platform that aggregates craft-level workforce profiles, suggests the problem is even more pronounced than previously believed. Where many estimates have long cited roughly 5 percent representation of women in the skilled trades, Skillit’s analysis puts the figure closer to 3.4 percent. We’re going backwards.
Hard Numbers, Annoying Truths
Skillit’s dataset — drawn from approximately 80,000 tradespeople’s profiles on their site — shows that women currently comprise, on average, only 3.4 percent of workers in skilled trades roles. Within that margin, it varies widely by the trade. The highest share of women appears among pipefitters (4.3 percent), while roles such as heavy equipment operators (2.5 percent) and carpenters (2.7 percent) lag further behind. Not among trades is roofing. Could it be zero? Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a woman roofer.
Even general labor — which is not considered a skilled trade because it lacks formalized training or certification — is the only category that breaches the 5 percent mark for women (at roughly 6.1 percent). This suggests that while women are present in broader construction roles, they remain scarce in fields defined by technical training and credentialing.
To reach a 5 percent overall target, the U.S. would need to nearly triple today’s count of women in skilled trades — a gap of more than 87,000 workers in absolute terms.
More Than Just a Shortage — A Visibility Problem
Skillit’s CEO, Fraser Patterson, argues convincingly that the issue is not a labor shortage in the conventional sense. Instead, it reflects a “digitization deficit” of the skilled labor market: unlike tech professionals, whose career histories, portfolios, and contact information are readily discoverable online, many contractors and tradespeople lack any searchable digital footprint.
“That’s part of why the industry looks so small,” the CEO told us in a recent interview. “You can Google a software engineer and find years of work experience, projects and references. Try that with a construction craftsperson — you’re lucky if they have a business card.” Consequently, these workers are now where to be found when construction companies look to staff up for a project.
Fraser points a finger at trade workers’ hands. There’s so much physical labor done hands-on that “Hands get bigger, fingers get calloused. It’s harder to sit and peck away at tiny screens.” And when you are carrying bundles of shingles up a ladder, you don’t really have access to a laptop to build your resume.
Skillit’s Digital Strategy and the Promise of Inclusion
Skillit aims to digitize 20 percent of the skilled labor workforce and create searchable, structured profiles that aggregate workers’ craft certifications, experience, assessments, and preferences into a unified labor marketplace. By increasing their digital visibility, he believes Skillit can open opportunities previously limited to word-of-mouth advertising.
External data points show incremental industry growth overall. However, certain segments, such as data centers and solar installations are exploding. Recruiting women to the trades would alleviate labor shortages in those fast-growing industries.
Despite as many as 314,000 tradeswomen during peak construction periods, there remain many more women than men to tap for entering the trades. Some skilled trades, such as plumbing, welding, and electrical work, have indeed seen strong growth in female participation through apprenticeships and training programs.
Opportunities and Challenges Ahead
Skillit’s survey reveals that women in skilled roles, on average, score 27 percent higher on trade competency assessments than their male counterparts — despite having 4.5 fewer years of experience. Moreover, the gender wage gap in the skilled trades is narrower than in professional jobs, at only 5.3 percent compared with the national average of more than 16 percent for white-collar employment.
This suggests that there are other barriers to entry than ability or performance for women entering and advancing in these roles.
To address the job shortage in critical construction segments, employers, unions, and training programs must build pipelines, inclusive cultures, and recognizable digital identities for craft workers. As infrastructure investments grow, so does the urgency to tap into the largest underutilized segment of the workforce: women.
Conclusion
Skillit’s research reframes the widely held belief that the only way to increase the number of women in the trades is to raise the percentage, in other words raising the tide so that even the small boats will rise higher. Also, there isn’t as much a shortage of labor as there is difficulty finding workers, because the digital net misses non-digitized workers.
By making skilled workers digitally discoverable, platforms like Skillit may accelerate inclusion, helping employers find talent that has been invisible until now. Fraser sees it as a win-win for construction firms and workers. Not only will digitization fill job sites with workers, but it might also radically expand job choices and even the status and wages of workers.