Good morning, Construction Pros. This week the semiconductor and data center buildout hit a new ceiling, a state governor pulled the emergency brake on hyperscale permits, and the materials market threw two curveballs at every estimator in the country.
- TSMC goes bigger: A fresh $100B commitment pushes the chipmaker's Arizona total to a number no one saw coming.
- NY hits pause: The governor just signed an order that could freeze years of electrical and mechanical work in the nation's most active data center corridor.
- Copper and diesel: Diesel spiked nearly 5% in a week and a 50% copper tariff could land before August is out.
Know someone who would like this? Pass it on.
📊 MARKET PULSE
|
LABOR INDICATORS |
|
|
Construction Job Openings 298,000 Up +32K MoM, 10-month high ABC / BLS JOLTS |
Construction Hiring Rate 3.5% Matches Feb record low; hiring frozen BLS JOLTS |
|
Construction Quit Rate 1.3% Down 0.4 pts MoM; near decade low BLS JOLTS |
Construction Unemployment (NSA) 4.7% Up from 4.1% in May; 3.4% a year ago BLS CPS / CES |
|
MATERIALS AND COST |
|
|
Diesel (National Avg) $4.796/gal Up +4.8% WoW (Iran tensions); fuel riders now EIA On-Highway Diesel |
Steel HRC (Domestic Mill) $1,185/MT Down 1.0% MoM; 25% Section 232 active SteelBenchmarker / ABC |
|
Nonres. Input Prices -1.1% MoM +7.4% YoY; oil drove the dip, not durables ABC / BLS PPI |
Copper LME Spot $14,000/MT $6.34/lb; down 2% MoM; 50% tariff looms Aug 1 LME / WSJ Markets |
LABOR PULSE
This is a contractor's market, not a worker's. Openings are climbing but hiring has effectively stopped, with the 3.5% hire rate matching its all-time low. Workers are not quitting: the 1.3% quit rate is half the pre-pandemic baseline, which means crew stability is high but voluntary movement is dead. Construction unemployment ticked up to 4.7%, the highest in over a year. For foremen and subs, this means a larger labor pool, less wage pressure, and little risk of crews walking mid-job.
THE TAKEAWAY
Input prices dipped 1.1% in June, but the YoY number is still 7.4% higher and ABC's own economist says the dip was driven by oil, not durable materials. Diesel just reversed sharply, up 4.8% in a single week. A 50% copper tariff proposed for August 1 is the single biggest near-term escalation risk on any job with electrical scope. Lock in LME-indexed copper clauses before signing anything that ships material in Q3.
🏗 THE BIG MOVES
TSMC Raises U.S. Bet to $265B with Fresh $100B Arizona Commitment
TSMC announced an additional $100 billion investment on July 16, bringing its total Arizona commitment to $265 billion and adding four new fabs targeting 2-nanometer chip production for Apple and Nvidia. Cleanroom mechanical trades, ultra-high-purity pipefitters, and structural ironworkers from across California, Nevada, and New Mexico will be pulled into the Phoenix metro for a multi-year build. Federal CHIPS backing accelerates the timeline, though TSMC chairman C.C. Wei declined to commit to a fixed schedule.
Meta Locks in $50B for Louisiana "Hyperion" Campus, 7,500 Jobs at Peak
Meta confirmed a $50 billion expansion of its Richland Parish campus on July 13, scaling the site to nearly 10 million square feet and 5 gigawatts of AI computing capacity, with Turner, DPR, and Mortenson leading the build. Gulf Coast electricians, pipefitters running liquid-cooling systems, and heavy civil crews will see continuous multi-year work through 2030, with up to 7,500 construction jobs at peak. The project also includes Meta's $115 million regional trades training academy, structured to move workers into advanced facility skills on the job.
2 World Trade Center Breaks Ground, Completing Manhattan's Last Major Tower
Governor Hochul celebrated the groundbreaking for 2 World Trade Center on July 16, marking the start of the final commercial tower on the downtown Manhattan campus, with American Express as sole tenant and completion targeted for 2031. The 55-story, 2-million-square-foot Foster + Partners tower will generate 2,000-plus union construction jobs, starting with deep foundation and structural steel before transitioning to curtainwall, elevators, MEP, and electrical. The general contractor award for vertical construction has not yet been finalized, meaning first-phase union trade mobilization schedules remain fluid.
🔦 PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
CIVIL ELECTRICALSteel River Energy Center, Mississippi County, Arkansas
Cypress Creek Energy and Google broke ground July 14 on a $4.5 billion solar-plus-battery storage facility that will become the largest project of its kind in the United States, with 2.5 gigawatts of solar capacity paired with 2.9 gigawatt-hours of battery storage.
What makes this project stand apart is its end-to-end domestic supply chain: over 400,000 steel piles fabricated by PACO Steel in Blytheville, Arkansas from coils produced at U.S. Steel's Big River facility five miles away in Osceola, First Solar modules made domestically, and LG Energy Solution BESS units assembled stateside. Electricians carry the densest scope: miles of medium-voltage underground collection cabling, DC-to-AC inverters, on-site substation construction, and battery management system integration tied directly into Entergy Arkansas's transmission grid.
WHY IT MATTERS
With input prices 7.4% above last year and tariffs piling onto imported steel and copper, Steel River is a blueprint for tariff-proofing a major build. Every structural component originates within the same county as the project site. When your owner or GC asks how to insulate a bid from tariff volatility, this is the answer: regional supply chain density built into the procurement plan from day one.
Phases 1 and 2 are active now with 700 workers per phase and a 2027 target; Phase 3 pushes through 2029 for the full 2.5 GW buildout.
⚡ QUICK HITS
OSHA hits Blazey Construction for $343K after trench collapse. The Houston utility contractor was cited for two repeat violations following a July 15 excavation collapse in Alvin, Texas that hospitalized a worker. Failures included unsecured trench walls, no egress, and missing the 24-hour hospitalization reporting window.
New Brunswick IBEW and carpenters remain on strike. Hundreds of electricians and carpenters from IBEW Locals 1555 and 2166 and UBC Local 1386 have halted hospital and legislative renovation work across New Brunswick, Canada for more than a month over wage parity and cost-of-living adjustments. No resolution has been reported.
New York freezes new hyperscale data center permits for one year. Governor Hochul signed Executive Order 62 on July 14, blocking environmental permits for any new data center drawing 50 megawatts or more while the state writes new rules. Specialty electrical and mechanical contractors in the region should expect sudden reallocation of scheduled project starts.
Fatal crawl space incident draws $299K in OSHA penalties. OSHA cited D L Bandy Constructors and staffing firm Pacesetters Personnel Services following a worker fatality at Converse Elementary School, where the contractor had removed rollover protection from mini-excavators to fit them into tight spaces with no atmospheric testing. A willful citation for equipment modification puts every confined-space crew on notice.
TerraFirma closes $115M for autonomous earthworks deployment. The construction robotics firm completed a $100M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins on July 16, earmarked for expanding deployment of physical AI and collaborative robotics on grading and excavation sites. Operators should expect autonomous grading systems to begin appearing on active jobsites this year.
🔢 ONE NUMBER
TSMC's total committed investment in Arizona, making it the single largest private manufacturing buildout in U.S. history.
🔧 THE TOOL
Diesel jumped nearly 5% this week, but the bigger bid risk sitting in your contract right now is copper. A proposed 50% Section 232 tariff on imported copper could land as early as August 1. If you have electrical scope on a multi-month job, you need an LME-indexed escalation clause locked in before you sign anything. Set the baseline at the LME official cash settlement price on your bid date, roughly $14,000 per metric ton right now. If the settlement price on your material purchase date exceeds that baseline by more than 10%, the contract price adjusts proportionally. Add a hard trigger: any new Section 232 tariff on copper activates the clause automatically, regardless of the 10% threshold. A 50% tariff adds roughly $3.17 per pound overnight. On a 10,000-pound rough-in, that is $31,700 you will not recover without the language.
📚 FURTHER READING
Construction Dive: Meta commits $50B to Louisiana data center, surrounding region - the full scope of the Gulf Coast's biggest-ever construction project, including the workforce development commitments.
ENR: Materials Prices Dropped in June, but Future Escalation Likely - why the 1.1% MoM input price dip this week will not hold into Q3.
$265 billion staked in Arizona, $50 billion in Louisiana, and New York just slammed the brakes on new data center permits; this market does not do slow weeks. Where are you seeing the labor pull in your region? Hit reply. 🏗
Know someone who would like this? Pass it on.