What to Ask a Skilled-Trades Recruiter Before You Travel

Eighty-three percent of construction firms lost at least some new field hires in their first 90 days, according to the 2026 Workforce Survey from the Associated General Contractors of America and NCCER, which drew 1,830 responses in July and August. The reason firms gave most often was a mismatch between what workers expected and what the work turned out to be. Physical demands came second. Travel or scheduling came third.

A lot of that mismatch starts on the recruiter call.

Electricians were the hardest craft to fill in the same survey (81 percent of firms with electrician openings reported trouble filling them), so a licensed journeyman will hear from recruiters, and the hourly rate is the part of that call everybody remembers afterward. The rest tends to show up later, on the first check or at the badging office.

Find out who signs the paycheck first

Get the legal name of the employer and confirm you will be on its W-2 payroll. If the call or text came out of nowhere, look the company up and call a number you found yourself. In April 2026 the Federal Trade Commission put out an alert about fake recruiters who text job offers and "claim to be with legit companies you might know."

A fee is the clearest warning sign. "Honest placement firms do not typically charge a fee to job candidates," the FTC's job-scam guidance says, because the hiring company pays the firm. Reported losses to job and employment agency scams went from $90 million in 2020 to $501 million in 2024 (FTC, March 10, 2025).

Ask how the per diem is paid

In June 2015 the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division announced that six Gulf Coast staffing agencies would pay $3,491,442 in back wages to 3,263 workers, among them welders, electricians and pipe fitters on oil-and-gas and maritime jobs. The agencies had labeled part of the wage as per diem, for expenses the workers never had, and the workers were shorted on overtime as a result. One firm, Permanent Workers, owed $1,110,103 to 604 people.

"Workers don't often complain about receiving per diem pay in place of regular wages because they believe they make more money being paid this way," says David Weil, then the division's administrator. "The truth is these workers are losing out."

The Fifth Circuit ruled the same way in 2010 in Gagnon v. United Technisource. A staffing agency paid an aircraft painter $5.50 an hour in straight time plus $12.50 an hour in per diem, but only up to 40 hours a week. The opinion, by Judge Emilio M. Garza, says the court could "conceive of no reason why a legitimate per diem would vary by the hour and be capped at the forty-hour mark." The per diem went into his regular rate for overtime.

So ask how per diem is paid. An hourly per diem that stops at 40 hours is the setup the Fifth Circuit threw out.

Under 29 CFR 778.217(c)(1), only "the actual or reasonably approximate amount of the expense" can be left out of the regular rate, and 778.217(d) says paying back ordinary costs like rent, lunch or the drive to work does not count as an expense reimbursement at all. Under 778.217(c)(2), a travel allowance at or under the federal per diem rate is per se reasonable. For travel from October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, the GSA per diem bulletin FTR 27-01 sets the standard continental rate at $113 for lodging and $68 for meals and incidentals, or $181 a day, and 295 locations get more.

How long the job runs matters for taxes too. IRS Publication 463 treats an assignment "realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less" as temporary; if it is expected to go longer, living allowances become taxable income. On a multi-year campus, get the expected length of your assignment in writing.

Find out who pays for housing and tools

Data center builders handle housing in different ways. At camps run by Target Hospitality, the construction companies typically "offer housing, meals and amenities to their employees for free as long as they're working," according to a Bloomberg report republished by Insurance Journal in March. At Dunn Village and RV Park in Delhi, La., where Corporate Mobile Housing has a multiyear contract to house trade workers for Turner Construction on a Meta data center, workers pay the company for rooms and meals, "often using a per-diem provided by Turner."

Ask who pays for the room.

Offers at DPR Construction can include living allowances or per diems, mobilization bonuses and travel stipends, says Brian Schneider, a talent acquisition manager at DPR, in a Construction Dive report from September. "Traveling can be difficult," Schneider says.

Federal law limits what tools can cost you. If the employer requires you to bring tools of the trade, 29 CFR 531.35 says their cost cannot cut into the minimum wage or overtime owed that week (state law can add more). A mobilization or completion bonus promised in advance also goes into the overtime rate, because under 29 CFR 778.211(b) an employer who promises a bonus ahead of time "has abandoned his discretion with regard to it." In May 2025 Cupertino Electric paid more than $1.4 million to 2,620 workers after the Labor Department found it had left non-discretionary bonuses out of the rate used to figure overtime.

The workweek has a start time, and some travel counts as work

Federal overtime runs on a fixed workweek of 168 hours that "may begin on any day and at any hour of the day," under 29 CFR 778.105. Section 778.104 bars averaging, so a 30-hour first week followed by a 50-hour week still pays 10 hours of overtime in the second one. Ask which day the workweek starts.

Some travel is paid time. 29 CFR 785.38 counts the ride from a required meeting place to the job as hours worked, and 785.39 counts overnight travel that "cuts across the employee's workday," weekends included. A shuttle from town to a remote site is generally unpaid under 29 CFR 790.7(f). California is stricter, and required rides on employer buses are paid time there under Morillion v. Royal Packing (2000), per a 2003 DLSE opinion letter.

Skill tests and licenses decide the classification

ACE Electric of Valdosta, Ga., netted more than 500 employees this year but had to hire about 700 to get there, ENR reported on September 3. Traveling hires now go to Valdosta for a weeklong orientation and take written and hands-on skill tests. When a new hire tests below what was claimed during recruiting, ACE may offer a lower classification and wage instead of sending the worker home. Over the past year, 83 percent of the workers offered that deal took it.

In those cases, Mindy Bates, ACE's HR director, recalls telling colleagues, "Let's figure out something else." ACE also runs in-house programs for field crew managers and superintendents. "You cannot hire your way out of this situation," Bates says.

Be exact about what you have done. OSHA's electrical definitions in 29 CFR 1910.399 say it is "likely" a person will be qualified on some equipment and unqualified on other equipment, so a title tells the recruiter less than a plain account of the switchgear you have terminated or the feeders you have pulled. Texas accepts journeyman licenses from ten states, Alabama and Oklahoma among them, and the TDLR wants 8,000 hours under a master electrician plus at least a year holding the other state's license and a passed exam in that state.

Start dates move with the work

The data center campus DPR Construction is building in Abilene, Texas, was onboarding "around 200 people at a minimum in a week" in September 2025, and "it kind of ebbs and flows," says Dichelle Burrus, one of DPR's project leads there, in a KTAB report.

Ask what still has to happen before your start date is firm, and who calls you if it moves after you book travel.

Ask who directs your work on site. OSHA's Protecting Temporary Workers page lays out shared responsibilities between the staffing agency and the host employer, and its coordination guidance says workers should know before they start how to reach the host employer to report an injury or a safety concern.

Final pay follows state law

Ask how the job ends. The rules differ by state. In Texas, the Texas Workforce Commission says final pay is due no later than six calendar days after a layoff or discharge and on the next regular payday after a resignation, and a worker there has 180 days from the missed payday to file a wage claim.

This article is general information, not tax or legal advice. Check your own situation with a CPA, an enrolled agent or a lawyer.

Sources

1. 2026 Workforce Survey Analysis, Associated General Contractors of America and NCCER, September 3, 2026.
2. That job offer text is probably a scam, Federal Trade Commission, April 30, 2026.
3. Job Scams, Federal Trade Commission, March 2023.
4. New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024, Federal Trade Commission, March 10, 2025.
5. Federal enforcement effort finds more than 3,000 Gulf Coast workers owed nearly $3.5 million in back wages by staffing agencies, Release 15-0872-DAL, U.S. Department of Labor, June 22, 2015.
6. Gagnon v. United Technisource, No. 09-20098, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, May 27, 2010.
7. 29 CFR 778.217, Reimbursement for expenses, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
8. GSA Per Diem Bulletin FTR 27-01, U.S. General Services Administration, August 18, 2026.
9. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, Internal Revenue Service, accessed September 29, 2026.
10. AI 'Man Camps' Offer Golf, Free Steaks to Lure Workers in Texas, Bloomberg, republished by Insurance Journal, March 6, 2026.
11. 'It's about taking care of people': How top contractors staff data center jobs, Construction Dive, September 2, 2026.
12. 29 CFR 531.35, "Free and clear" payment; "kickbacks", Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
13. 29 CFR 778.211, Discretionary bonuses, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
14. US Department of Labor recovers over $1.4M in wages for 2,620 workers after employer failed to pay overtime wages, Release 25-734-SAN, U.S. Department of Labor, May 6, 2025.
15. 29 CFR 778.105, Determining the workweek, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
16. 29 CFR 778.104, Each workweek stands alone, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
17. 29 CFR 785.38, Travel that is all in the day's work, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
18. 29 CFR 785.39, Travel away from home community, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
19. 29 CFR 790.7, "Preliminary" and "postliminary" activities, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
20. Opinion letter 2003.04.22, Travel time pay for employee with alternative worksites, California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, April 22, 2003.
21. Even as contractors cut headcount, 73% still plan to hire, ENR, September 3, 2026.
22. 29 CFR 1910.399, Definitions applicable to this subpart, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of September 25, 2026.
23. Transfer Your Out-of-State Electrician License to Texas, Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, accessed September 29, 2026.
24. Abilene's Data Center advances swiftly with 5,000+ workers, KTAB/KRBC, September 17, 2025.
25. Protecting Temporary Workers, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 29, 2026.
26. Communication and Coordination for Host Employers, Contractors, and Staffing Agencies, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 29, 2026.
27. Texas Payday Law, Texas Workforce Commission, accessed September 29, 2026.

Featured image: Norfolk Naval Shipyard, via DVIDS (public domain).