Data report
Across the metros and states we track, residential building permits rose 20% in 2025 versus 2024 — from 441,202 to 529,405 permits across the trades below. Every figure is from public building-permit records, ranked by how fast each category grew.
Permit growth by trade · 2024 to 2025
Method
Counts are residential building permits filed in 2025 and 2024, by trade, across every jurisdiction in our dataset. The same window is used for both years so the comparison is like-for-like. This is recorded permit activity, reproducible from the public record, not survey data.
Caveats
These totals reflect our coverage footprint, which grows as we add jurisdictions, so the national figure is a floor, not a census. The per-trade ranking is the more stable signal. A permit reflects a job filed with a building department, a strong proxy for activity but not identical to completed work.
See the busiest contractors behind these numbers, by trade and metro, in the full set of permit data reports.