The construction industry has the second-highest risk of suicide across all industries. Data shows that in 2021, almost a fifth of deaths by suicide were tied to construction, despite construction workers making up only 7% of the American workforce.
A new bill introduced in the United States Senate by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) seeks to find answers to the long-standing problem of suicide in the construction industry. The bill, “Constructing the Path to Suicide Prevention Act,” would authorize a national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study to identify the risk factors driving suicide among construction workers and use that information to inform prevention programming.
“From our homes to our offices, our roads to our favorite coffee shops, construction workers are responsible for building America,” says Cortez Masto. “But work in this industry presents distinct mental health risks, and we owe it to construction workers to find solutions. This legislation will give us the tools we need to combat the tragically high rate of suicide among construction workers and work to end the stigma around mental health on the jobsite.”
What the Bill Would Study
Cortez Masto notes in a statement that the bill would investigate risk factors for deaths by suicide among construction workers, including employment and financial stability, history of substance and alcohol use and access to essential resources such as health care coverage, employment benefits and employee assistance programs. It would require the Department of Health and Human Services to submit a report to Congress on policy recommendations for future suicide prevention programming targeted to construction workers.
If passed, the bill could address several weaknesses in the construction industry by:
- Providing detailed research for a fragmented industry. Workers move between employers, projects and jobs. Small contractors employ many of those workers, and work can be seasonal or transient. This makes conventional workplace mental-health programs harder to apply consistently; and
- Identifying occupational factors that generic suicide programs do not capture, such as job insecurity, long hours, chronic pain/injury, substance use, workplace culture, isolation, access to lethal means, layoffs and financial stress.
How Would the Bill Add to Existing Efforts?
The federal government and construction industry have studied suicide rates throughout the sector, leading to efforts that have helped lower rates, including coordinated industry programs, peer support networks and targeted awareness campaigns. Several of those programs include OSHA’s construction-suicide prevention effort, Construction Working Minds and the annual Construction Suicide Prevention Week, which returns September 14-18.
An analysis by The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) on suicide deaths in construction found that those efforts have helped drop rates in recent years. CPWR’s data, which uses figures from the National Center for Health Statistics 2022-24 Mortality Cause File, shows that deaths by suicide fell 1.7% from 2023 to 2024 (5.1K to 5K), and the suicide rate decreased from 43.2 to 41.9 per 100,000 workers.