Arizona Construction: The Border Economy and the Hispanic Workforce Building the Southwest

Arizona's Hispanic construction workforce exceeds 50%, one of the highest shares nationally (Source: HCC Arizona Report 2025). Phoenix added over 150,000 residents in 2023 alone (Source: Maricopa County Population Statistics, 2023), and Arizona ranked third nationally in construction employment growth from 2020 to 2024 (Source: Associated General Contractors, 2024). TSMC's Arizona chip plant required 11,000 construction workers at peak (Source: TSMC, 2024). The workforce building all of this is majority Hispanic, and the policy infrastructure to support that workforce is years behind where it needs to be.

I want to start with what I saw at the Chandler data center and semiconductor corridor, because the scale there resets expectations about what Arizona construction actually looks like in 2025.

The Intel and TSMC Corridor Near Chandler

The semiconductor manufacturing buildout near Chandler, Arizona, is unlike most construction I have seen in the Southwest. TSMC's fab project was described at its peak as the largest active construction project in the United States. Eleven thousand workers on site. The staging areas alone covered acres. Materials logistics required temporary road infrastructure. The crane count at peak phases was visible from miles away.

This is not residential suburban sprawl, which is what most people picture when they think about Phoenix construction. This is heavy industrial construction at a scale that changes the labor mathematics for an entire regional market. When 11,000 workers are concentrated on a single project, the ripple effects on labor availability for other projects in the Phoenix metro are significant. Wages get bid up. Smaller projects lose crews to the semiconductor sites. The market tightens in ways that feel sudden even though the demand signal had been visible for years.

The workforce staffing this construction is majority Hispanic. Concrete, site work, structural steel, mechanical and electrical rough-in, roofing: across every trade category present on the TSMC site and the Intel expansion nearby, Hispanic workers are the dominant workforce group. Arizona ranked third nationally in construction employment growth precisely because this labor force was available to ramp up at scale.

I drove from Tucson to Nogales on a site visit in early 2025. I wanted to see the cross-border supply chain in person. What I saw was a construction economy that does not map cleanly onto national workforce statistics. Workers who live on one side and build on the other. Supply chains that cross the border daily. Contractors who operate in both markets simultaneously. The policy frameworks designed in Washington often treat this economy as if it were two separate economies. It is not. It is one integrated construction market that happens to have an international boundary running through it.

Phoenix: The Fastest-Growing Large City and What It Means for Construction Labor

Phoenix's population growth rate makes the construction labor question urgent in a way that slower-growing markets do not experience. Adding 150,000 residents in a single year means demand for housing, commercial space, infrastructure, and utility systems that does not wait for workforce pipelines to mature.

What I hear from Phoenix contractors is that the labor market is tight across almost every trade. Experienced workers are being pulled in multiple directions simultaneously by competing projects. Wages are rising faster than in most other major markets. And the workforce to sustain this pace of growth is predominantly Hispanic.

The challenge this creates for policy is that Arizona has not built the workforce infrastructure, bilingual apprenticeship programs, Spanish-language safety training at scale, bilingual contractor licensing pathways, to support a majority-Hispanic construction workforce at the pace the market is demanding. Workers are showing up and doing the work. The institutional infrastructure to credential, support, and protect them is running years behind.

The Tucson Market: Military, University, and a Different Construction Culture

Tucson is worth discussing separately because it is a different construction market than Phoenix in ways that matter for policy.

Tucson's construction base includes significant military and federal government work. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base generates sustained construction demand for facility maintenance, infrastructure upgrades, and new construction. Fort Huachuca, about an hour south of Tucson, adds military construction to the regional mix. The University of Arizona campus has been in a sustained period of capital construction. Federal and institutional construction has different wage and labor requirements than private market construction: prevailing wage rates, certified payroll requirements, and often specific bonding and insurance thresholds that challenge smaller Hispanic-owned firms.

What I observe in Tucson is that the Hispanic construction workforce is doing the work but the Hispanic contractor community is less developed relative to Phoenix. The federal and institutional construction requirements that dominate the Tucson market create barriers for emerging Hispanic contractors that the private residential and commercial market in Phoenix does not impose as heavily.

The Nogales Port and Cross-Border Supply Chains

Arizona's border geography creates a dimension to its construction market that does not exist in inland states. My site research in the Tucson-Nogales corridor gave me a direct understanding of this that no aggregate dataset could have provided. The Nogales port of entry facilitates cross-border building material supply chains, particularly for tile, ceramic, stonework, and certain wood products sourced from Sonoran suppliers. Contractors in Southern Arizona, Tucson, and as far north as Phoenix have relationships with Mexican suppliers that reduce material costs for specific applications.

The Sonoran contractor community is also relevant to Arizona's construction workforce. Contractors and workers from Sonora, Mexico have historically crossed into Arizona for construction work, particularly during periods of strong Arizona demand and weaker Mexican economic activity. The immigration enforcement environment directly affects this cross-border labor flow in ways that are felt by Arizona contractors and project owners as labor availability constraints.

I have had conversations with contractors who told me that their Sonoran subcontractor relationships, built over years, became unusable during periods of elevated enforcement not because the workers were doing anything wrong, but because the risk calculus changed for workers deciding whether to cross. That is a concrete labor market disruption driven entirely by policy choices.

What Arizona Community College Construction Programs Could Become

Arizona has a strong community college system with multiple campuses serving the Phoenix and Tucson metros. The Maricopa Community Colleges system is one of the largest in the country. The construction program capacity exists. What is largely absent is bilingual instruction.

A Spanish-language construction program at Maricopa Community Colleges, teaching trade fundamentals, safety certifications, and pre-apprenticeship preparation in Spanish, would reach exactly the workers who are currently building Arizona's semiconductor fabs and housing subdivisions without formal credentials. The workforce demand is there. The language barrier in the existing programs is the primary obstacle.

Community college construction programs that offer bilingual certificates would also strengthen the pathway from laborer to apprenticeship to journeyman, a pathway that the current English-only system makes more difficult than it needs to be for Spanish-dominant workers.

What Spanish-Language Contractor Licensing Would Require from Arizona's Registrar

Arizona's Registrar of Contractors administers contractor licensing for all construction firms operating in the state. Currently, the licensing examination is offered in English. The application and compliance documentation is in English. For a Spanish-dominant contractor applying for their first license, the language barrier is a real obstacle even if their trade knowledge is complete.

What Spanish-language licensing would specifically require from the Arizona Registrar: translation of the licensing examination into Spanish, Spanish-language examination preparation materials, Spanish-speaking staff at licensing offices, and Spanish-language versions of the continuing education requirements for license renewal. This is not a radical change. California's CSLB has been navigating this conversation for years. Arizona is starting from a position where 50%+ of the construction workforce is Hispanic. That demographic reality makes the case for action urgent.

The HCC Arizona report makes these recommendations to the state with specific implementation guidance. The data supporting the case is in the report. The political will to act is the remaining variable.