We don't give you data. We give you information you can act on.
3,302 ranked construction and design firms and 708 leadership conversations on record.
The wage and headcount data commercial construction and design firms plan against describes a market that has already moved. We track the signals that move it: capital builds, offer movement, who is leaving whom, and turn them into information you can act on this quarter.
Industry improves what was. We provide intelligence on where things are going.
- 01
Signals
A capital build lands. Offers in that market re-price against it. Senior people start taking calls. None of it shows in the public wage print for a year or more.
- 02
Informed or uninformed
Every company in the market makes the same decisions this quarter: what to pay, whether to counter, where to grow. The difference is whether they make them on last year's data or on what is moving now.
- 03
Connections, relationships, problems
The signals live in conversations: who is being courted, what they were offered, which firm is quietly staffing up. We hold those conversations and keep the record.
- 04
Consultant, not vendor
We do not sell a service off a rate card. We read your market with you, on the record, and tell you what it means for the decision in front of you.
The Nexorra Memo · No. 1 · Filed May 22, 2026
The public wage print is a year late. The market is not.
When a multi-billion-dollar capital build lands in a regional labor market, public wage data lags it by more than a year. Senior people start receiving offers priced against the build's tolerance for delay, not against the companies they currently work for. By the time the public wage prints catch up, the pay bands they re-anchor have already moved.
If your pay bands were set in 2023, that lag is the gap we exist to close.
— Cody Ballah
Managing Principal. Writes the memo, signs every read that leaves the desk. St. Louis.
On the record.
Market calls, dated when made, with the reasoning attached and a date they resolve. When the print lands, the outcome is stamped here — either way.
- 01
Made June 11, 2026
Resolves February 2027
Outcome · pending
Construction job openings, which bottomed near 200,000 in February 2026, will not close 2026 below 230,000. The hiring window firms think they have is closing, not opening.
Seasonally adjusted openings climbed three straight months (February 201,000; March 234,000; April 259,000) while the quits rate ticked up from 1.6 to 1.7 percent. Demand is anchored by multi-year committed capital in data centers, power, and advanced manufacturing that does not pause with the news cycle.
- 02
Made June 11, 2026
Resolves December 2026
Outcome · pending
Through the second half of 2026, mid-size construction and design firms in the data-center corridor (Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas) will lose power and mission-critical engineers faster than they can replace them, and posted compensation for those seats will keep climbing.
When a hyperscaler launches a $115 million academy to train its own craft workforce, the engineering layer above that labor is already spoken for. A single data-center customer is funding seven new gas plants in Louisiana; national firms are standing up dedicated power business lines. All of it draws on the same fixed pool of power-delivery engineers.
- 03
Made June 11, 2026
Resolves June 2027
Outcome · pending
New York heavy-civil and transit seats will be the most contested in the country through mid-2027. Firms without an anchor mega-project will lose senior people to the two joint ventures formed this June, and counteroffers will not hold them.
The Penn Station reconstruction and the Midtown bus terminal program both stood up joint-venture teams in the same month, in the same market, drawing on the same senior bench. Two simultaneous generational projects in one metro is a talent event, not a procurement event.
Whether you are growing, holding, or handing the company over, the same four questions decide whether you keep the people who make it work.
Four questions every business leader in construction is living with.
- 01
Market rate against your internal bands
New hires come in above the people already doing the job. Annual raises of 2–5% cannot close a gap the market opened in one year.
The readA band-by-band read of where the market is against your payroll.
- 02
What you should be paying, and why
A current read on your bands against the companies hiring from you.
The readWho is hiring against you, and what they are offering beyond cash.
- 03
Why your offers are being declined
What people in your trade and market are weighing in 2026, and where your offer misses it.
The readThe gap between what you offer and what they hear.
- 04
Who on your senior team is about to get the call
Which of your people are exposed, to whom, and what a defensible counter would have to include.
The readA named exposure list, and what it would take to hold each one.
What we sell is the read: what your market is doing and what it means for the decision in front of you. Most engagements end there.
In their words
Reference letter, August 24, 2026. Quoted verbatim; the full letter is linked.
“They wanted to learn about our company history, our culture and personality, and what we hoped this person would bring to our team both now and in the future. … They understood when we didn't feel certain candidates were the right fit and never pressured us to move forward. … The best recommendation I can give is that we're getting ready to work with Nexorra again.”
Stefanie Ballinger, P.E.Principal, Benton Engineering · Jacksonville, Illinois
Read the letter