2025–2026 Market Report: Engineering Companies

The engineering sector entered 2025 with a mixed but fundamentally healthy backdrop, and it heads into 2026 with a clear split between high-growth technical niches and more cyclical traditional design practices. In the U.S., total construction spending for 2025 came in at $2.164 trillion, down 1.4% from 2024, while FMI forecasts total U.S. construction put in place to decline 1% in 2025 and rise 1% in 2026 to about $2.2 trillion. That soft headline number hides a much more favorable story for engineering firms exposed to data centers, power infrastructure, grid modernization, water/wastewater, environmental remediation, semiconductor manufacturing, and transportation upgrades.