Multiskilling in U.S. Construction Crews: Implications for Work-Time Utilization and Equivalent Staffing Requirements

The construction industry faces labor shortages driven by an aging workforce, reduced entry of skilled workers, and rising construction activity. Multiskilling has been proposed as a strategy to improve labor utilization, yet field-based evidence from the United States remains limited. This study examines the extent of multiskilling and its implications for crew-level labor utilization and equivalent staffing requirements. Direct onsite work sampling was conducted across 36 construction projects, covering 644 workers and 11,407 observed work activities. Task execution was classified at the worker level to distinguish primary-trade and multiskilled work. Each observed multiskilled configuration was compared with a same-sequence single-skilled configuration using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Multiskilled activity was observed on 30 of 36 projects across 60 crews. The crew-level mean multiskilling percentages averaged 36%, and some workers performed up to six trades or skills within a workday. The observed multiskilled configuration had significantly higher direct-work and lower idle-time proportions, with mean differences of 13% and 31%, respectively. Equivalent staffing analysis estimated that observed multiskilled crew sizes were approximately 31% and 42% smaller than the lower and upper-bound equivalent single-skilled staffing requirements. These findings provide field-based evidence of how workforce flexibility relates to work-time utilization and staffing requirements in U.S. construction.