Report: Missouri scores above average for women’s construction industry pay

Women working full time in Missouri’s construction sector earn somewhat more than women working full time in general, according to a review of data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census published this week by San Diego-based research firm Construction Coverage.

Women working in Missouri construction earn a median annual wage of $49,846, compared to a median annual wage of $48,121 for women working fulltime overall.

When Construction Coverage researchers made cost-of-living adjustments, they found women working in Missouri’s construction industry earned $54,321, compared to a national median earning of $54,044. They assigned a ranking for Missouri of 31 among the 50 states for this level of annual earnings. After cost-of-living adjustments, the researchers ranked Alaska as the No. 1 state for women’s construction pay, at a median earning level of $74,251 per year, while No. 50 was Delaware, with $47,555.

Women’s representation in the construction sector has been growing for decades. Construction Coverage cited federal data from July indicating women made up 10.7% of full-time construction workers nationally, with Missouri women making up 9.6%. When part-time workers are included in the total, women make up 14.4% of all workers in the construction industry nationwide.

Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the researchers note that in the 1960s, women made up roughly 6% of construction workers, but since roughly 2016, the share of women in construction employment has consistently increased, currently approaching 15%.

Construction Coverage’s data analysis found that women tend to be concentrated in some of the industry’s best-paying roles. Federal data show women make up the vast majority of financial managers and human resources managers in the sector and form a significant share of lawyers, project managers, information technology analysts and software developers working for construction firms. Attorneys, training specialists and logistics/transportation managers have median annual earnings ranging $106,000-$170,000, researchers found.

Women continue to have “low representation” in construction trade jobs like plumbers, carpenters, masons and electricians, the researchers found.

Construction Coverage said its methodology included an analysis of the U.S. Census 2023 American Community Survey and cost-of-living data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s 2023 Regional Price Parities dataset. The company ranked states according to the median annual wage for full-time women working in the construction industry, adjusted for cost-of-living differences. Researchers also calculated the median annual wage for full-time working women across all occupations and women’s share of total construction industry full-time employment. To improve the reliability of the results, 5-year estimates were used to calculate state-level statistics, while 1-year estimates were used to calculate national-level statistics.