Here is the number that explains why TerraFirma exists. Construction is one of the only major industries where a worker produces less today than a worker did fifty years ago.
Economists Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson put it plainly. In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper (WP 30845), they find that construction value added per worker was roughly 40 percent lower in 2020 than it was in 1970. Not 40 percent less growth. Lower, in absolute terms, than half a century earlier, while the rest of the economy roughly doubled.
The counterfactual is staggering. If construction had merely kept pace with the rest of the economy, they estimate aggregate U.S. productivity would be about 10 percent higher today. An entire decade of growth, left in the ground.
The granular picture is just as grim. Analysts at Construction Physics estimate the industry manages roughly 1.15 square feet of building per labor-hour, with on-site labor still around half of all construction labor. The work is stubbornly manual, and manual work does not compound. Software does. That gap is the whole opportunity.
