If you run a construction firm in Alaska, the number that matters isn’t on a national report. It’s the foreman who gave notice last week. It’s the project you turned down because you couldn’t staff it. It’s the senior PM a Lower 48 firm just poached with a relocation package you never saw coming.
Turnover in construction has always been part of the business. What’s changed is that you can no longer count on replacing the people you lose.
You can’t hire your way out of this
In the 2025 AGC and NCCER workforce survey, 92% of construction firms reported trouble filling open positions, and worker shortages were the single biggest cause of project delays, hitting 45% of firms. More than half said the candidates they did find lacked the skills or credentials the work required.
That’s the trap. In a market this short on skilled people, you can’t simply backfill the ones who walk. There aren’t enough of them, and the ones who are available often aren’t ready. Every experienced person you lose is one you may not replace this season, let alone this month.
And losing them costs more than a job posting and a few weeks of training. Gallup puts the cost of replacing an employee at one-half to two times their annual salary, and calls that a conservative estimate. Skilled trades and PMs sit at the upper end of that range, since recruiting, lost productivity, and the months it takes a replacement to reach full speed all run higher for specialized roles. For an experienced hand, that’s most of a year’s pay, or more, walking out the door every time.
So the real question isn’t how high the industry turnover rate runs. It’s how many of your skilled people you can afford to lose when you can’t reliably replace them. In Alaska, the honest answer is very few.
Why Alaska makes retention harder than it is anywhere else
You’re not competing in a national labor market. You’re competing in a small one. There are only so many skilled tradespeople and experienced PMs in the state, and every firm is chasing the same ones. That changes the math.
Seasonal cycles tempt good people to chase year-round work elsewhere. Remote and camp jobs wear crews down in a way office work never does. The cost of living keeps moving, so “competitive pay” is a target that won’t hold still. And outside firms will happily fly your best people south for a number you didn’t think to match.
In a market this tight, you cannot out-recruit a retention problem. There simply aren’t enough skilled people to keep replacing the ones you lose. If you’re treating retention as something HR worries about after the hire, that’s the problem.
What’s actually driving people off your crews
Strip away the surveys and the causes are usually the same handful, and all of them are fixable.
Pay that quietly falls behind.
Wages in construction have struggled to keep pace with the cost of living, and your people notice long before you do. They don’t ask for a raise. They just take a call from a recruiter.
No path forward.
A skilled worker who can’t see a way up will find a company that shows them one.
Onboarding that ends after the safety briefing.
In that same AGC survey, 48% of firms said new hires either failed to show up or quit almost immediately. People decide fast, and senior hires especially decide in their first 90 days whether they made a mistake. Hand someone a hard hat and point them at a site, and you’ve told them exactly how much you invested in keeping them.
The person signing their timecard.
People don’t quit companies. They quit supers and PMs who can’t lead. A good one holds a crew together. A bad one empties it.
Feeling like a number on a job they could do anywhere. Skilled people want to matter. If you don’t make them, someone else will.
What actually works
None of this is mysterious. It’s just work that most firms never get around to.
Pay that’s competitive and explainable.
Not only higher, but a structure your people understand and trust. When someone can see how pay works and why, they stop wondering whether the grass is greener.
Real onboarding, especially for senior hires.
Walk them in. Set them up. Make the first 90 days deliberate instead of accidental, because that’s the window where you lose them.
Develop the people who run your crews.
Your supers and PMs are your retention strategy whether you’ve trained them for it or not. Train them for it.
Start looking before you’re desperate.
The best time to find your next PM is before the current one leaves, not the week after.
Treat retention as a system, not a perk.
The firms that keep their people don’t do one clever thing. They do all of the above, on purpose, year after year.
This is the work we do
At PeopleAK, we don’t stop at filling the seat. We help you fix the job, fix the pay, find the right people, onboard them so they stay, and build the kind of organization skilled workers don’t want to leave. That’s the whole point: not a warm body for the slot, but a crew that’s still intact next season.
If you’re tired of training people just to watch them leave, that’s where we start. Take a look at how we find the right people and how we help you build an organization worth staying in.
No BS
In a market where you can’t count on replacing the people you lose, retention isn’t an HR nicety. It’s how you stay able to bid the work. We’ve spent more than 40 years helping Alaska employers attract and keep the people they can’t afford to lose.
Let’s talk about what’s actually driving turnover on your crews, and what to do about it. Schedule a call.