Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How construction companies use video: our own count of video on the homepages of the 85 construction companies that file annual reports with the SEC; how many contractors fly drones and what they film; jobsite photo and reality-capture software; the safety record and the OSHA training rules behind toolbox talks and training video; the labor shortage and online recruiting, from AGC, NCCER and ABC surveys; how construction and design firms market themselves; the size of the industry from BLS and Census data; and where six popular construction statistics came from.
In our reading of 76 homepages of construction companies that file with the SEC, 47.4% carried a video player on November 1, 2026; among 10-K filers, all U.S.-based, 52.5%. (Our count)See details
Video was as common on nonresidential, heavy-civil and specialty contractors' homepages (48.0%) as on homebuilders' (46.2%). (Our count)See details
36.1% of ABC member contractors surveyed in May 2026 fly drones; of those, 80.8% use them to monitor site progress and 77.5% for marketing and media. (ABC)See details
49% of firms in AGC and NCCER's 2026 Workforce Survey added or increased online recruiting such as social media and targeted ads, down from 57% in the 2024 survey. (AGC)See details
69% of firms in the 2026 survey said new field hires leave because the job does not match their expectations. (AGC and NCCER)See details
Construction deaths in 2024 were 1,034 in OSHA's count and 1,064 in CPWR's, the most of any U.S. industry. (OSHA; CPWR)See details
OSHA caps video at 25% of class time in its 10- and 30-hour courses, while 1,230,107 people, two in three trainees, took them online in fiscal 2026. (OSHA)See details
'The least digitized industry' traces to a 2015 McKinsey index that ranked construction second to last among U.S. sectors; Procore's 10-K turned it into one of the 'least digitized' industries in the world. (McKinsey Global Institute; Procore)See details
How many construction companies put video on their homepage?
About half. On November 1, 2026 we opened the homepages of every construction company that files annual reports with the SEC, and 47.4% of the readable homepages carried a video player (36 of 76). Among the companies filing a 10-K, all with U.S. addresses, the share was 52.5% (31 of 59). Nobody else publishes this count, so it is our own measurement; the method and every company's result are below.
The frame: every company EDGAR lists under construction industry codes (SIC 1520 to 1731) that filed a 10-K, 20-F or 40-F between January 2025 and November 2026 and printed a website in its filings, 85 companies in all. 76 homepages were readable; one blocked our browser, five failed to load, and three no longer belonged to the company after an acquisition or a lapsed domain. We read each homepage once in a headless browser, with no clicks, and counted a video player when the page held a playable video element or a labelled click-to-play video.
On the homepage (Nov 1, 2026)
All readable (n = 76)
Homebuilders (n = 26)
Nonresidential, heavy-civil and specialty (n = 50)
Video is as common on commercial and heavy-civil contractors' homepages as on homebuilders'; the gap is one or two pages either way. The social mix differs: homebuilders, who sell to consumers, link to YouTube and Instagram more often, while LinkedIn leads among the others. TikTok barely registers. 21.1% of all readable homepages opened on a full-width autoplay hero video. Facebook links appeared on 59.2% and X links on 43.4%.
Most of this video is self-hosted. Of the 36 homepages with a player, 22 used a video file served from the company's own site, 7 a YouTube embed, 6 Vimeo and 2 Brightcove (a page can use more than one). Recruiting is more visible than video: 86.4% of the 10-K filers' homepages linked to careers or jobs, and 55.9% to a YouTube channel.
Limits: this is a small frame of listed companies, roughly one in four of them foreign issuers filing a 20-F, and listed firms are far larger than the typical contractor. A homepage is one page, not a company's whole video output. In a hand check of 30 pages, all 15 counted as having video did, and 2 of the 15 counted as not showed a play icon on a still image with no player in the page code, so the video shares may be slightly low. The full list is in homepages.csv, with a summary in crawl-summary.json.
How many contractors fly drones, and what do they film?
About a third of contractors fly drones. In a May 2026 survey of its contractor members, Associated Builders and Contractors found 36.1% said their company currently flies drones (ABC). ABC does not publish the number of firms that answered, so treat the shares as indicative.
Among the ABC members that fly, site progress monitoring is the most common use, at 80.8% (ABC). Marketing and media comes second, at 77.5% (ABC): more than three in four drone-flying contractors use the footage to sell their work, not just to manage it. Half, 50.0%, use drones for inspections (ABC), and 37.5% for aerial mapping or photogrammetry (ABC).
The kit is mostly ordinary cameras. 81.3% of ABC's drone-flying members carry high-resolution RGB cameras, far ahead of thermal cameras or lidar (ABC); 97.1% named DJI as the maker of their main drone (ABC); and 61.9% had spent between $1,000 and $10,000 on drone hardware (ABC). Regulation was the most-cited barrier, at 53.5% (ABC).
What ABC drone-flying contractors use drones for (May 2026)
Earlier surveys counted differently. Dodge Data & Analytics, in research for USG and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released in December 2019, found 63% of general contractors already used drones (Dodge Data & Analytics) and 41% of all contractors, general and trade together (Dodge Data & Analytics). The Dodge and ABC samples differ in who was asked and when, so the gap between them is not a trend.
Commercial firms also planned to spend more. In AGC of America and Sage's 2025 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook survey (1,109 firms, November and December 2024), 26% of commercial construction firms expected to increase their investment in drones in 2025 (AGC and Sage), and 53% planned to use mobile software for sharing drawings, photos and documents (AGC and Sage). Finding pilots is hard: in AGC and NCCER's 2026 Workforce Survey, 69% of firms with openings for operators of drones, robots and other remote equipment had trouble filling them (AGC and NCCER), up from 59% in the 2025 survey (AGC and NCCER).
Reality capture: photos, 360 video and the software that stores them
Construction software firms now sell jobsite imagery as a product. Procore, whose 10-K counts 17,850 customers at the end of 2025 (Procore 10-K), lists storage of jobsite photos on a map filtered by GPS data among its platform features (Procore 10-K) and added "Photo intelligence", which summarizes progress and safety from jobsite photos, in October 2025 (Procore). On July 27, 2026 Procore agreed to buy the drone and reality-capture firm DroneDeploy for about $845.0 million in cash (Procore 8-K); its announcement says DroneDeploy is used on over 3 million jobsites (Procore).
Trimble's 10-K says its Reality capture service in Trimble Connect gained AI-based classification for construction quality control (Trimble 10-K). OpenSpace, a 360-degree capture vendor, says 77 billion square feet have been captured on its platform (OpenSpace), a running company counter. BuiltWorlds, a construction-technology media and research network, reported that nearly 58% of organizations in its 2026 survey use reality capture on most or every project, and that among users, 100% fly drones and 88% use 360 photography (BuiltWorlds); its sample size is in the members-only report.
The money behind it: Autodesk's architecture, engineering, construction and operations product family earned $3,583 million in the year to January 2026, up 22% (Autodesk 10-K); Trimble's AECO segment earned $1,498.6 million in 2025 (Trimble 10-K); Procore's revenue was $1.3 billion (Procore 10-K). These segments include design and project-management software, not only imagery.
Why does construction need so much safety training?
Construction had the highest number of fatal work injuries of any U.S. industry in 2024 (CPWR). The count depends on who tallies it: OSHA, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data, gives 1,034 construction deaths in 2024 (OSHA), while CPWR, the construction-safety research center, counts 1,064 (CPWR). Neither says why the two differ; we show both. Across all U.S. industries there were 5,070 fatal work injuries that year (BLS), and in 2023 construction accounted for nearly one-fifth of them (CPWR).
Falls are the leading killer. Falls from elevation caused 389 of OSHA's 1,034 construction deaths in 2024 (OSHA). Among construction and extraction workers, an occupation group BLS counts separately, fatal falls, slips and trips fell to 370 in 2024 from 400 in 2023 (BLS). In CPWR's 2024 fatality map, roofing contractors had the most deaths of any detailed subsector, 70 (CPWR). CPWR's Focus Four are the injury groups that cause the majority of construction deaths: falls, struck-by, caught-in or -between, and electrocution (CPWR).
Small firms carry much of the risk. Establishments with 10 or fewer employees accounted for 42.4% of construction deaths in 2022 (CPWR), and in 2024 the days-away-from-work injury rate at sites with 11 to 49 employees was 1.2 per 100 full-time workers, three times the rate at sites with 1,000 or more (CPWR). In CPWR's 2025 survey with Dodge Construction Network, firms with fewer than 20 employees were the least likely to offer training on nearly every topic, though 90.0% offered training in safety procedures (CPWR); CPWR does not give the sample size.
Other risks are counted too. Men in construction had a suicide rate of 56.0 per 100,000 in 2021, against 32.0 for all working-age men, in CDC data (CDC MMWR). CPWR counts 5.1K suicides among construction workers in 2023 (CPWR). Construction workers are about 7% of the workforce but more than one-third of occupational heat-related deaths (CPWR). OSHA's proposed heat rule, which covers construction, was published on August 30, 2024, and its page lists no final rule as of November 2026 (OSHA).
What OSHA's rules require
Federal rules put the training duty on the employer, worker by worker. The general construction rule, 29 CFR 1926.21(b)(2), requires the employer to instruct each employee in recognizing and avoiding unsafe conditions (eCFR). Topic rules add more: a fall-protection training program for each employee who might be exposed to fall hazards (1926.503(a)) (eCFR), a written certification record of that training with names, dates and a signature (1926.503(b)) (eCFR), and a duty to retrain when the job or equipment changes (1926.503(c)) (eCFR). Scaffold training covers each employee who performs work while on a scaffold (1926.454(a)) (eCFR), and ladder training each employee using ladders and stairways (1926.1060(a)) (eCFR).
Language matters. OSHA's 2010 policy statement on training standards says employers must train in a language and vocabulary workers can understand (OSHA), and that a worker who does not speak English must be taught in a language the employee can understand (OSHA). That is an interpretation, not a regulation. It matters in construction because Hispanic or Latino workers were 35.4% of people employed in the industry in 2025, against 20.0% of all workers, in the BLS household survey (BLS); Hispanic construction worker deaths rose from 197 in 2011 to 408 in 2022 in CPWR's count (CPWR).
Fall protection training is itself among the most-cited violations. In OSHA's preliminary data for fiscal 2026 (October 2025 to August 2026), the general fall-protection standard, 1926.501, was the most cited of all, and five of the top ten were construction standards (OSHA). The training rule, 1926.503, ranked eighth (OSHA). OSHA publishes the ranking but not the citation counts for that period.
OSHA 10 and 30-hour cards, and where video fits
OSHA's voluntary Outreach Training Program, the 10-hour and 30-hour cards, trained 1,845,745 people in fiscal 2026, up from 906,532 in fiscal 2017 (OSHA). Construction classes were most of it: Construction 10-Hour classes were 46.9% of trainees and Construction 30-Hour 22.8% (OSHA). Online delivery grew from 31.7% of trainees in fiscal 2017 (OSHA) to two in three in fiscal 2026, 1,230,107 people (OSHA).
OSHA limits video inside these classes. Its Outreach rules cap videos at 25% of instructional time and require workshops, case studies and demonstrations (OSHA). A Construction 10-hour class must spend 4 hours on the Focus Four hazards (OSHA) and a 30-hour class 6 hours (OSHA). OSHA also says the program is a voluntary program that does not meet the training requirements of any OSHA standard (OSHA): a card does not replace the site- and task-specific training the rules above require.
OSHA makes its own videos. Its construction "v-Tools" prevention videos run mostly 2 to 4 minutes and are meant for employer and worker training (OSHA). Toolbox talks are the usual format on site: the first National Fall Prevention Stand-Down in June 2014 drew almost 5,000 stand-downs (OSHA), and OSHA held the 13th annual one in May 2026 (OSHA). OSHA has not published participation counts for later years.
Does safety video work? The evidence is thin
Few trials test video itself. A randomized trial, published in 2021, with 98 Hispanic day laborers in post-Katrina New Orleans found a short narrative safety video raised knowledge scores to 94% against 72% in the control group (Frontiers in Public Health); it measured knowledge right after viewing, not injuries. A 2018 NIOSH study of toolbox talks at Cincinnati construction firms found that adding a story and discussion questions increased what workers learned; 351 workers took the baseline test and 207 the follow-up (American Journal of Industrial Medicine). A 2019 Finnish trial with 119 construction workers tested virtual reality against lectures, not video (Journal of Safety Research), and a 2018 study of 360-degree jobsite photos was a usability test with Thirty participants (IJERPH). None measured injury rates.
How short of workers is construction, and how do firms recruit?
Most contractors cannot fill craft jobs. In AGC of America and NCCER's 2026 Workforce Survey (1,830 responses, July and August 2026), 87% of construction firms had openings for hourly craft workers and 82% for salaried staff (AGC and NCCER), and 88% of those with craft openings said the jobs were as hard or harder to fill than a year before (AGC and NCCER). Electricians were the hardest to find: 81% of firms with electrician openings struggled to fill them (AGC and NCCER). Shortages delayed projects at 42% of firms in 2026 (AGC and NCCER), down from 45% in 2025 and 66% in 2022 (AGC and NCCER). In AGC and Sage's survey of commercial firms for 2026 (951 respondents, November and December 2025), 82% reported a hard time filling hourly craft jobs (AGC and Sage).
Federal data show the same strain, more mildly. U.S. construction employers had 251,000 job openings on the last business day of August 2026 (BLS), an openings rate of 2.9 percent, in BLS's preliminary job-openings survey (BLS). Associated Builders and Contractors models how many net new workers the industry must attract each year; its January 2026 estimate is 349,000 for 2026 (ABC), down from 439,000 estimated for 2025 (ABC). These are model outputs, not counts: ABC converts forecast spending into labor demand at about 3,450 jobs per $1 billion (ABC).
About half of contractors now recruit online. In the 2026 AGC and NCCER survey, 49% of firms had added or increased online recruiting, such as social media and targeted digital ads, in the past 12 months to reach younger applicants (AGC and NCCER). The same answer was 55% in 2025 (AGC and NCCER) and 57% in the 2024 survey run with Arcoro, which sells HR software to contractors (AGC and Arcoro). Size matters: in 2025, 77% of firms with more than $500 million in revenue had added online recruiting, against fewer than half of firms with $50 million or less (AGC and NCCER). Outreach to high schools, colleges and career-tech programs ran at 48% in 2026 (AGC and NCCER).
AGC Workforce Survey: firms that added or increased, in the past 12 months
2024
2025
2026
Online recruiting (social media, targeted digital ads)
The "online/video" answer lumps classes held over Zoom or Teams together with recorded video, so it is not a count of training video. In 2026, 10% of firms had added augmented, mixed or virtual reality training devices (AGC and NCCER), and 21% had put in technology to deliver and track training (AGC and NCCER).
New hires leave because the job is not what they expected. Only 17% of firms in the 2026 survey reported no turnover among new field employees in their first 90 days (AGC and NCCER), and 69% of firms named a mismatch between expectations and job reality as a reason new hires leave, the most common answer (AGC and NCCER). 52% used a structured onboarding process (AGC and NCCER). Showing the real job before someone is hired, in a jobsite or day-in-the-life video, is one answer to that mismatch; the survey did not ask about it.
AI is arriving in hiring slowly. In AGC and Sage's 2026 outlook survey, 61% of commercial firms said they use AI or plan to invest more in it (AGC and Sage), but only 16% used it for recruiting, training or other HR work (AGC and Sage).
Who the workforce is
Construction employed 12,121,000 people in 2025 on the BLS household-survey basis, which includes the self-employed (BLS). Women were 11.3 percent of them (BLS), against 47.1 percent across all industries (BLS). The median worker was 42.2 years old (BLS), and 702,000 were 65 or older (BLS). In NCCER and Ambition Theory's 2025 study of women in construction, 63% of companies had mentorship programs, but only 37% of women had taken part in one (NCCER and Ambition Theory); the release gives no sample size.
How do construction and design firms market themselves?
Mostly through relationships, with small marketing teams. Nobody we found publishes a current count of construction firms that use video in marketing or proposals; the closest primary data comes from Zweig Group's surveys of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms, from OpenAsset, which sells software to AEC marketers, and from ABC's drone survey above, where 77.5% of drone-flying contractors use the footage for marketing and media.
In Zweig Group's 2025 Marketing and Business Development survey, 79% of AEC firms had a full-time marketing leader (Zweig Group), and 55% relied mainly on seller-doers, technical staff who also sell, for new business (Zweig Group). 33% used AI regularly in marketing and business development, and another 39% were testing it (Zweig Group). Only 56% had a formal marketing plan (Zweig Group).
Zweig's own numbers for the median marketing budget differ: its September 2025 release gives $400,000 firm-wide (Zweig Group), while a 2026 Zweig Letter article citing the same report says nearly $430,000 (The Zweig Letter). As a share of revenue, the median was 6.2 percent of net service revenue in 2019 (The Zweig Letter) and fell to 3.6 percent in 2020 (The Zweig Letter); Zweig has not published a newer share in public.
Social media is now standard. In OpenAsset's 2024 survey of 360 AEC marketers, 94% relied on social media as a key channel for leads and awareness (OpenAsset), and 69% said their marketing team had fewer than 10 people (OpenAsset); 61% named limited budget and staff as a major obstacle (OpenAsset). The newest platform breakdown we found is Zweig's 2019 survey, when 96 percent of AEC firms used LinkedIn (The Zweig Letter), 84 percent Facebook (The Zweig Letter) and only 45 percent Instagram (The Zweig Letter). Zweig's AEC Marketing Excellence Awards now judge 10 categories, one of them drone video (The Zweig Letter).
Repeat work dominates. AEC firms in Zweig's 2019 survey said 73 percent of their work came from past clients on average (The Zweig Letter). The newest public buyer study we found is old: in Hinge Research Institute's 2013 study of AEC buyers, 62% turned first to friends or colleagues to find a new firm (Hinge Research Institute) and about 5% used online search (Hinge Research Institute). Hinge sells marketing services to these firms.
For video in B2B buying generally (all industries, not construction), the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found 76% of B2B marketers used video in the 12 months before their mid-2024 survey of 980 marketers (Content Marketing Institute), and 58% rated video their most effective content type (Content Marketing Institute).
How big is U.S. construction?
U.S. construction employers had 8,364,000 payroll jobs in September 2026 (seasonally adjusted, preliminary), in the BLS establishment survey (BLS), up from 8,255,000 a year earlier (BLS). Specialty trade contractors, the electricians, plumbers, roofers and other trades, held 5,279,900 of those jobs (BLS), heavy and civil engineering 1,210,800 (BLS), and building construction 1,873,400 (BLS), of which nonresidential building 950,700 (BLS). Nonresidential specialty trades employed 2,939,600 (BLS).
The industry paid its employees an average of $41.69 an hour in September 2026, against $37.81 for all private-sector employees (BLS). Spending was running at an annual rate of $2,203.1 billion in August 2026, 1.7% below a year earlier, in Census Bureau estimates (U.S. Census Bureau): $773.0 billion private nonresidential (U.S. Census Bureau) and $547.8 billion public (U.S. Census Bureau). Private office construction ran at $134,119 million a year, up 29.8% (U.S. Census Bureau).
Most firms are small. Census County Business Patterns counted 814,557 construction establishments with paid employees in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau), 536,259 of them with fewer than five employees (U.S. Census Bureau). Commercial and institutional building contractors (NAICS 236220) had 39,072 establishments (U.S. Census Bureau), heavy and civil engineering 38,612 (U.S. Census Bureau), and specialty trade contractors 521,315 (U.S. Census Bureau). Union members were 995,000 of construction's wage and salary workers in 2025 (BLS).
Pay by job, and the outlook to 2035
The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey gives national figures for May 2025. Video editors are shown for contrast, because construction firms that make video either hire one or buy the work.
BLS projects construction and extraction occupations to average 587,000 openings a year from 2025 to 2035 (BLS). Construction manager jobs are projected to grow 9.1 percent (BLS) and electrician jobs 9.2 percent (BLS), against 3.5 percent for all occupations (BLS). Film and video editor jobs are projected to grow 3.7 percent (BLS); the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook combines editors with camera operators, but this projection is for editors alone.
What the popular construction numbers really say
A handful of construction statistics circulate through software vendors' blogs, investor filings and trade press. We traced each to the organization that produced it.
"Construction is the least digitized industry"
It is second to last, among 22 U.S. sectors, on one 2015 index. The source is the McKinsey Global Institute's Industry Digitization Index in its December 2015 report Digital America, which scored 22 U.S. sectors (McKinsey Global Institute) on 27 indicators of digital assets, usage and workers (McKinsey Global Institute). MGI's own 2017 summary puts construction second to last in the United States and last in Europe (McKinsey Global Institute). Procore's 2020 S-1 said construction "ranks second from last in digitization across all major sectors", dropping the U.S. scope (Procore S-1), and its 10-K for 2025 calls construction one of the "least digitized industries in the world" (Procore 10-K), a worldwide ranking no MGI index produced. Use instead: "Construction ranked second to last of 22 U.S. sectors on McKinsey Global Institute's 2015 digitization index."
"Construction drone use grew 239%"
That is one vendor's platform growth, not industry adoption. DroneDeploy reported 239% growth in construction use of its own platform in the year to May 2018 (DroneDeploy), based on its more than 30,000 users (DroneDeploy). CNBC restated it in July 2018 as industry-wide construction drone usage growth of 239 percent (CNBC), and Commercial UAV Expo's 2024 construction page still says drone usage in construction "has grown 239% in recent years", with no date or source (Commercial UAV Expo). Surveys of contractors give much lower shares: in 2018 Software Connect, a software-selection consultancy, found 26 percent of 158 small and midsize construction businesses used or expected to use drones by 2020 (Construction Equipment), and in May 2026 36.1% of ABC member respondents said they fly drones (ABC). Use instead: "36.1% of ABC member contractors surveyed in May 2026 said they fly drones."
"Construction productivity has been flat since the 1970s"
The two McKinsey numbers behind this say different things, and BLS's own measures disagree with both. MGI's 2017 report found construction labor productivity grew 1 percent a year from 1995 to 2014 (McKinsey Global Institute), averaged across 41 countries (McKinsey Global Institute): slow, not flat, and not a U.S. figure. A separate MGI sentence says U.S. construction productivity is stuck at the level of 80 years earlier (McKinsey Global Institute). ConstructConnect, which sells bidding software, reversed the global finding in 2018, writing that construction is less productive than in 1995 (ConstructConnect).
BLS publishes no productivity series for construction as a whole; its measures cover four industries with about 12.5 percent of construction employment (BLS). In those, industrial building productivity rose a record 45.8 percent in 2023 (BLS), and only highway, street and bridge construction was almost flat over 2007-19 (BLS). A 2018 Monthly Labor Review article by BLS economists found productivity rose 1.1 percent a year in single-family and 3.7% in multifamily construction from 1987 to 2016 (BLS Monthly Labor Review); it says aggregate data showing no growth for half a century rest on price deflators that do not fit construction (BLS Monthly Labor Review). The Richmond Fed, summarizing Goolsbee and Syverson, puts 2020 productivity more than 30 percent below 1970 on the aggregate measure (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond). Use instead: name the measure. "Aggregate data show U.S. construction productivity falling since 1970; BLS's industry measures show growth in homebuilding and industrial building."
"98% of megaprojects overrun by more than 30%"
The article and its own chart say different things. The line comes from a July 2015 McKinsey Productivity Sciences Center article, not the McKinsey Global Institute: it says 98 percent of megaprojects suffer cost overruns of more than 30% (McKinsey & Company). The exhibit behind it says only that 98% of projects incur cost overruns or delays, and covers mining, oil and gas and infrastructure projects in a commercial database as of November 2013 (McKinsey & Company). Bechtel's chief executive used the exhibit wording, 98% with overruns or delays, in a 2016 speech (ENR); World Construction Network repeated the stronger article wording, 98% over by more than 30%, in 2022 (World Construction Network); a claims consultancy shortened it in 2017 to 98% with cost overruns (Proactive). McKinsey's own June 2016 follow-up put large projects at up to 80 percent over budget (McKinsey & Company). Use instead: "McKinsey found 98% of large mining, oil and gas and infrastructure projects in a 2013 database had cost overruns or delays."
"Workers retain 95% of a safety video, 10% of text"
No study measured this. OSHA Outreach Courses, a company that sells online OSHA 10 classes, told prospective trainees in May 2024 that "studies" show 95% retention from video against 10% from text (OSHA Outreach Courses). The line is the marketing agency Insivia's: the 95% appears unsourced in Insivia's 2013 list of video statistics (Insivia), and Insivia now says its 95% figure came from a small directional survey it ran more than 16 years ago, not a peer-reviewed study (Insivia). Other pages on this site trace the same line in more detail. A study that did test construction workers, a 2024 University of Colorado Boulder dissertation with 591 workers, found hazard recognition highest for both pre-recorded video and hands-on interactive lectures (University of Colorado Boulder): video was neither simply better nor worse. Use instead: the trial results in the training section above, with their sample sizes.
"35% of construction time is non-productive"
It is what construction leaders estimated about their own weeks. The source is a PlanGrid and FMI survey of 599 construction leaders in April 2018 (PlanGrid and FMI); PlanGrid sold construction field software. Respondents estimated they spent more than 14 hours a week on "non-optimal" work such as looking for project data and fixing mistakes (PlanGrid and FMI). The report then applied that 35% share to all construction labor spending (PlanGrid and FMI) to reach $177.5 billion in U.S. labor costs for 2018 (PlanGrid and FMI). LetsBuild, another software vendor, restates it as 35% of working hours wasted on the construction site (LetsBuild), and zipBoard, in 2024, as nearly 35% of project time (zipBoard). Use instead: "In a 2018 PlanGrid/FMI survey, 599 construction leaders estimated they spent about 35% of their own working time on non-optimal tasks."
We started from the questions people search for about construction video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 231 figures from 38 publishers.
On November 1, 2026, each sourced figure on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: BLS employment, job-openings, household-survey, union, projections and wage data; Census construction spending and County Business Patterns; OSHA and eCFR pages; CPWR data bulletins; CDC MMWR; AGC of America workforce and outlook surveys with NCCER, Arcoro and Sage; ABC's shortage estimates and drone survey; Procore, Autodesk, Trimble and Bentley SEC filings; Zweig Group, OpenAsset, Houzz, Hinge, the Content Marketing Institute and the pages behind each popular claim. bls.gov, cdc.gov and mckinsey.com refuse scripts, so those rows were read through Internet Archive captures; BLS wage rows were read from the BLS data API. The homepage figures are our own reading of 85 company homepages in a headless browser on November 1, 2026. We left out DroneDeploy's gated industry report, the full SMPS and Zweig reports, which are sold, and a construction-drone share we could trace only to a press release with no named survey.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
561 CIKs listed by EDGAR under SIC 1520/1531/1540/1600/1623/1700/1731 -> 93 with a 10-K/20-F/40-F filed 2025-01-01..2026-11-01 -> minus 8 exclusions (2 shells, 6 with no website URL in their filings) = 85; 29 residential, 56 nonresidential; 65 10-K filers, 20 20-F filers
36 / 76 readable homepages with video_player = true in homepages.csv; rule: video player (any: element >= 150x80, labelled click-to-play control or hidden embed)
34 / 76 readable homepages with player_element = true in homepages.csv; rule: visible video player element at least 150x80 px (strict element-only rule)
16 / 76 readable homepages with autoplay_hero_video = true in homepages.csv; rule: muted autoplaying background <video> starting in the first 900 px and at least 1,000 px wide
57 / 76 readable homepages with careers_link = true in homepages.csv; rule: careers/jobs link (text careers/jobs/join our team/hiring, a careers or jobs path or host, or an applicant-tracking host such as Workday, iCIMS, UKG, Workable)
12 / 26 readable homepages with video_player = true in homepages.csv; rule: video player (any: element >= 150x80, labelled click-to-play control or hidden embed)
11 / 26 readable homepages with player_element = true in homepages.csv; rule: visible video player element at least 150x80 px (strict element-only rule)
21 / 26 readable homepages with careers_link = true in homepages.csv; rule: careers/jobs link (text careers/jobs/join our team/hiring, a careers or jobs path or host, or an applicant-tracking host such as Workday, iCIMS, UKG, Workable)
24 / 50 readable homepages with video_player = true in homepages.csv; rule: video player (any: element >= 150x80, labelled click-to-play control or hidden embed)
23 / 50 readable homepages with player_element = true in homepages.csv; rule: visible video player element at least 150x80 px (strict element-only rule)
36 / 50 readable homepages with careers_link = true in homepages.csv; rule: careers/jobs link (text careers/jobs/join our team/hiring, a careers or jobs path or host, or an applicant-tracking host such as Workday, iCIMS, UKG, Workable)
31 / 59 readable homepages with annual_report_type = domestic (10-K) and video_player = true in homepages.csv; rule: video player (any: element >= 150x80, labelled click-to-play control or hidden embed)
33 / 59 readable homepages with annual_report_type = domestic (10-K) and youtube_channel_link = true in homepages.csv; rule: link to a YouTube channel or handle (not a single video)
51 / 59 readable homepages with annual_report_type = domestic (10-K) and careers_link = true in homepages.csv; rule: careers/jobs link (text careers/jobs/join our team/hiring, a careers or jobs path or host, or an applicant-tracking host such as Workday, iCIMS, UKG, Workable)
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Nobody counts construction video directly. No public survey we found measures how many construction firms make marketing, training or recruiting video. Our homepage count covers 85 companies that file with the SEC, much larger than the typical contractor, and about a quarter of them are foreign issuers.
Several surveys sell into the market or publish no sample size. AGC's partners Sage and Arcoro, Procore, OpenSpace, OpenAsset and Hinge sell to construction or design firms. ABC's drone survey, CPWR's training survey with Dodge, and NCCER's study of women in construction give no sample size.
Trade-association surveys are not random samples. AGC and ABC survey their own members, who choose to answer.
Counts differ by source. OSHA and CPWR give different 2024 construction death totals, and Zweig gives two different median marketing budgets for the same report; we show both in each case.
Some figures are old. The newest public breakdown of the social platforms design and construction firms use is from 2019, and the newest buyer study of how clients find such firms is from 2013.
Safety-video studies are small. The trials cited measured knowledge or attitudes soon after training, not injury rates.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/construction-video-statistics#DRV-003. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Construction Video Statistics." Last verified Nov 1, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/construction-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, November 1). Construction video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/construction-video-statistics
MLA
“Construction Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 1 Nov. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/construction-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Construction Video Statistics.” Last modified November 1, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/construction-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_construction_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Construction Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/construction-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-11-01}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Nov 1, 2026: First published with 231 figures from 38 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many construction companies use video on their website?
About half of the large ones. On November 1, 2026, 47.4% of the 76 readable homepages of construction companies that file annual reports with the SEC carried a video player, by our count, and 52.5% among the 10-K filers.
What percentage of contractors use drones?
36.1% of ABC member contractors said in May 2026 that they fly drones. Of those, 80.8% use them for progress monitoring and 77.5% for marketing and media.
Do construction companies recruit on social media?
About half do more of it. In AGC and NCCER's 2026 Workforce Survey, 49% of firms had added or increased online recruiting such as social media and targeted digital ads in the past 12 months, after 55% in 2025.
Can OSHA training be done by video?
Partly. OSHA's 10- and 30-hour Outreach courses may use video for no more than 25% of instructional time, and the program does not replace the task-specific training OSHA's rules require of each employer.
How many construction workers die each year?
1,034 in 2024 by OSHA's count from BLS data, 389 of them from falls; CPWR counts 1,064.
How big is the construction labor shortage?
ABC estimates the industry must attract about 349,000 net new workers in 2026, a model estimate. In AGC and NCCER's 2026 survey, 87% of firms had hourly craft openings.
Is construction the least digitized industry?
Not as measured. The McKinsey Global Institute's 2015 index put construction second to last among 22 U.S. sectors.
