This is why a 5% shortage feels like a crisis.

Not because we lack sufficient workers, but because we lack visibility and connection to the 95% of workers who are already out there.

Why Craft Workers Are Invisible

For decades, the construction labor market has been a dark, invisible landscape with employers forced to rely on whoever appears through job boards, referrals, staffing agencies, or ATS systems. Without structured, craft-specific data, there’s no way to search, target, or hire strategically so we remain reliant on passive tools that keep everyone in the dark in three key ways:

1. Invisible by default - Only 18% of craft workers have a digital profile and most are buried in generic job boards that flatten their skills and fail to capture the nuance of their craft.

2. Search doesn’t work - Without structured profiles, platforms can’t filter for what matters. Try finding an HVAC tech with commercial rack experience in supermarkets and you end up sifting blindly through a mountain of resumes with “HVAC” and “supermarket” somewhere in the text. 

3. The tools don’t fit -  Craft hiring runs on phone calls but most systems are built for email and desktop. As a result, 75% of interested workers never hear back and remain unseen.

Lighting up America's craft labor force

We can't afford to wait generations for more craft workers to enter the industry. That’s why our mission every day at Skillit is to help civil, commercial and industrial contractors instantly surface the best workers who are already out there, with near-zero effort.

Here’s how we’re doing that:

• Profile by voice, not forms: Craft workers don’t sit at desks so we built a conversational AI that lets them build rich, searchable profiles just by talking.

• Search that actually works: Our platform understands what recruiters mean, not just what they type. It’s structured, intent-based, and precise enough to find even the most specific skills in seconds.

• Outreach that never drops the ball: Our AI scheduler handles follow-ups, reschedules, and works nights and weekends making sure 100% of qualified workers hear back.

• A living, growing workforce map: The more workers we onboard, the more visible the craft workforce becomes. And once it’s visible, recruiters can stop guessing and start targeting the perfect worker before a role even opens. 

A Brighter Industry Begins with Visibility

The labor shortage will take years to resolve but the invisibility problem can be solved today.

We’re just getting started at Skillit but have already digitized and made visible 150,000 craft workers and we’re growing 10X annually. So workers who were once invisible are now searchable, reachable, and ready to hire and customers like Swinerton, DPR, Mortenson, and WB Moore are already finding the exact workers they need; faster, with less effort and less cost than ever before.

Because until every craft worker is visible, nothing else works. You can’t screen what you can’t see. You can’t connect with who you can’t reach. And you can’t predict labor gaps if the system has no signal.

That’s why we’re building the infrastructure construction has always lacked, and our vision is simple: 

Every craft worker visible. Every connection effortless.

This is how construction solves its labor problem.

This is how our industry delivers critical projects.

This is how we build a livable planet.