Employment in American sawmilling has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, with just 85,400 workers recorded in the third quarter of 2025 — the tenth consecutive quarter of decline. That is according to Jesse Wade, an economist and the National Association of Home Builders’ director of tax and trade policy and housing policy research, who revealed that sawmillers have shed jobs continuously for more than two years, with headcount now falling below levels recorded before the pandemic hit.
It comes as production held flat through the quarter, with utilisation rates near 70 per cent, whilst the four-quarter moving average edged to 68.8 per cent from 68.2 per cent — a marginal lift that sits against a longer structural slide running back to 2017, as capacity expanded and output did not follow.
Technology is helping sawmillers maintain output with fewer workers
What is notable, however, is that sawmillers are maintaining output even as the workforce shrinks. Wade suggests technology may be part of the explanation, noting in a separate NAHB analysis published in December that “technological advancements in place from new investment into sawmills” have likely enabled fewer workers to produce higher levels of output — though he stops short of identifying it as the primary driver.
On a four-quarter moving average, sawmill production was 1.2 per cent above the second quarter and 3.1 per cent higher than a year earlier. Mills across North America were operating at a loss for much of 2025, creating conditions in which curtailments and closures further reduced lumber supply heading into 2026.
And lumber prices vary by species. Softwood fell 4.9 per cent across the quarter, though it remained 3.9 per cent above year-earlier levels, whilst hardwood moved the other way — posting a 1.0 per cent gain for the seventh consecutive quarterly increase, a run that has now stretched nearly two years.
Across all of 2025, US importers took in an estimated 12.7 billion board feet of softwood lumber — the lowest full-year total since 2014, with fourth-quarter volumes the weakest in nearly eleven years. Wade is measured but pointed on what drove it: “higher duties were not the only market headwind for imports, as residential construction demand faded over the course of 2025.”
Combined antidumping and countervailing duties on Canadian imports doubled to 35 per cent through the year, and a new 10 per cent Section 232 tariff on all softwood lumber imports took effect in October, pushing the effective rate on Canadian product to 45 per cent — significant, given Canada accounts for around 80 per cent of what the US sources from abroad.
It comes as Wood Central has tracked a sustained weakening in US residential construction demand through the back half of 2025, with softwood lumber consumption retreating alongside it and homebuilders pulling back on new starts amid tight affordability conditions.
At 85,400 workers, the US sawmill sector now employs fewer people than at any point in the past twelve years. Tariffs have punished import volumes, housing demand has not recovered, and the workforce is shrinking even as mills hold output steady. With the NAHB flagging the 2026 lumber production and pricing outlook as highly uncertain, there is little in the current environment to suggest the floor has been found — context Wood Central has tracked in depth, including the six-decade construction productivity stall examined in Prefab Rethink: The 60‑Year Innovation Gap Behind the Housing Crisis.
