Overview

Launched in September 2026 by the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, America’s Skills Trades Dashboard is an interactive national data tool designed to help employers, policymakers, workforce development organizations, education and training providers, and state and local leaders understand supply and demand conditions across the skilled trades workforce.

The Dashboard accompanies, one of the Alliance’s first collective research efforts: The State of America’s Skilled Trades: A National Report.  The report indicated about 1.7 million skilled trades job openings are projected each year through 2035 to meet growth and replace workers who leave these occupations:

• Employment of electricians, HVAC technicians and industrial machinery mechanics is projected to grow at twice, three times and five times the rate for all occupations, respectively
• Training programs produce just 55 workers for every 100 needed.
• Only half of those who enroll in skilled trades training programs finish.

The report examines 124 skilled trades occupations in all 50 states to identify where workers are needed and whether training is keeping pace. The report sets a new benchmark to support the next generation of the U.S. skilled workforce and help employers, educators and policymakers target training and investment.

This report is one of the first projects from the Alliance, founded in July 2026 by BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford Motor Company, and Google; with new members: AT&T, Barton Malow, Blackstone, Cintas Corporation, DEWALT, Dycom, the Hershey Company, ManpowerGroup, Meta, Microsoft, Milwaukee Tool, NVIDIA, Verizon and Waymo.

Together, the report and the Dashboard examine workforce supply, training pipelines, employment demand, worker movement, and other factors affecting the nation’s skilled trades. The Dashboard enables users to move beyond national-level findings by exploring conditions occupation by occupation and state by state.

The tool covers 187 detailed occupations that call for hands-on technical skill learned through apprenticeship, vocational training or extended on-the-job learning. Several federal surveys report some of these occupations together, so the tool shows them as 124 occupations in five groups: (1) construction and extraction; (2) installation, maintenance and repair; (3) production; (4) transportation and material moving; and (5) engineering technicians. Every state and the District of Columbia are covered and the Dashboard provides more than 5,000 state- and trade-specific profiles.

The skilled trades incorporates workers whose core skill is built through practice, applied to making, building, fixing, or moving physical things.

America’s Skilled Trades Dashboard organizes its analysis around six interconnected indicators of workforce supply and demand:

• Navigation
  • Examines perceptions of skilled-trades careers and whether individuals are being encouraged toward or away from these occupations, including the extent to which attitudes about trades careers translate into action.
• Entry
  • Examines the training pipeline, including how many individuals enter skilled trades each year and the pathways through which they enter, such as registered apprenticeship, college or career and technical education programs, and on-the-job learning.
• Conversion
  • Examines the extent to which participation in education, training, and apprenticeship results in employment in the skilled trades, including training completion and movement from preparation into trade-related work.
• Retirement & Replacement
  • Examines the age of the skilled-trades workforce, the share of workers approaching retirement, and whether enough new workers are entering occupations to help replace those leaving.
• Talent Movement
  • Examines interstate migration of skilled-trades workers and whether workers are moving toward states and regions experiencing workforce demand.
• Growth
  • Examines current and projected occupational demand, including employment growth, job openings generated by growth and worker turnover, and differences in demand among occupations and states.

Users can explore and compare individual occupations, trade groups, states, and national trends. The Dashboard also provides state-level measures of supply and demand pressure intended to help identify where workforce needs and available talent may be out of alignment. The developers caution that these measures represent relative positions and structural workforce pressures rather than direct counts of current job vacancies or definitive estimates of worker shortages.

Data & Methodology

The Dashboard methodology was prepared by the Burning Glass Institute.

Its 2026 edition incorporates data through 2025 and combines information from multiple public and proprietary sources, including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor registered apprenticeship records, U.S. Department of Education data, state employment projections, Perkins V state reports, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Burning Glass Institute career-history and job-posting data.

The tool is designed as an annual assessment of the skilled-trades workforce, providing a common evidence base that stakeholders can use to examine workforce conditions, identify training and talent-pipeline challenges, compare states and occupations, and target education, workforce, apprenticeship, and employer investments.

Dashboard Highlights

In October 2026, the following key trends impacting the skilled trades, measured nationally and by trade and state, were highlighted:

• $3.8T in value added each year by 18.4 million trade workers, 12.3% of GDP
• +32% - the trades' average pay premium over typical work without a degree
• 24% of trade workers are 55 or older and nearing retirement
• 83% of school counselors say trade options are under-presented to students

Resources

America’s Skilled Trades Dashboard. (2026). Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades. America's Skilled Trades Dashboard

The State of America’s Skilled Trades: A National Report

See Related: Alliance for America's Skilled Trades - BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford Motor Company & Google | Learn & Work Ecosystem Library