The remodeling industry is taking on a larger role within the residential construction sector. Structural tailwinds, such as an aging housing stock, the growing trend of aging-in-place among older home owners, and record-high housing wealth, will continue to grow remodeling’s market share further. As a result, NAHB Economics will be providing a quarterly update on the labor market and input prices for the remodeling industry in between the releases of NAHB’s Remodeling Market Index (RMI) and NAHB’s State Projections of Remodeling (SPR).
Labor
The number of residential remodelers employed during the second quarter of 2026 was seasonally adjusted at 454,100, accounting for over 49% of the total residential building construction employment. While remodeling employment experienced a loss of 5,100 compared to the first quarter of 2026 and fell 1.0% year-over-year, it has grown over 19% compared to its level prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The average hourly earnings in nominal terms (i.e., not adjusted for inflation) for residential remodelers during the second quarter of 2026 was $37.91, up $0.32 or 0.8% compared to the previous quarter. Wages grew 2.3% year-over-year, which was higher than the overall residential building construction sector. However, real earnings are currently negative since it is lower than both the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, with the latter being the preferred inflation measurement of the Federal Reserve.
Nonlabor: Remodeling Input Price Index (RIPI)
NAHB Economics has recently created the NAHB Remodeling Input Price Index (RIPI) which is a fixed-weight composite that measures monthly price changes among nonlabor inputs associated with residential improvements and routine residential maintenance & repair. While the RIPI does not estimate the total cost of a remodeling project or the price a remodeler should charge a customer, it serves as a useful guide which provides insight into the prices of selected inputs used within the remodeling industry. You can access the methodology for RIPI here.
As of the second quarter of 2026, the NAHB RIPI shows that input costs for remodelers rose 6.6% on a year-on-year basis, up from the 3.9% increase in the previous quarter. This is higher than the 5.4% increase for final demand, but lower than the 7.8% experienced by the new residential construction sector. The RIPI has shown rising input costs for remodelers (i.e., greater than 0%) for 11 consecutive quarters.
