Our nation’s infrastructure is set to get a big, much needed boost from the Federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act and bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. These new funding streams not only target expansion, maintenance, and remediation of a wide range of infrastructure systems and assets, from broadband and water systems to lead pipes and solar energy but will spur an unprecedented number of new infrastructure jobs.

These investments include both traditional brick-and-mortar spending along with new smart infrastructure like broadband, and have the potential to bring long-term economic returns, increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by as much as $320 billion per year.1 Across our nation’s cities, towns and villages, this means a growing infrastructure workforce, improved resilience and a greater ability to meet the challenges of the future.

An infrastructure job is one in which the work required is related to the design, construction or maintenance of infrastructure. Despite the significant potential that infrastructure jobs hold for economic recovery and the immense anticipated demand for workers, little is known about how well our nation’s workforce is aligned, willing and ready to take on these new jobs. Based on a proprietary dataset of job postings in the U.S. from January – April 2021, this analysis examines the open and close date of all infrastructure jobs to determine those that take longest, and are hardest, to fill in our current pandemic/post-pandemic economy.