Throughline

Skilled trades

Construction Manager in the United States

73 postings read · sampled 2026-09-01 · source ats

What employers actually ask for

Credentials named in the 73 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.

What it costs

Exam and application fees plus typical self-study hours. Almost nobody needs every credential on this list — start with the top line.

Most-asked-for, on its own
$180OSHA 30-Hour Construction · ~30 hrs
asked for in 4 of 73 postings — 5%
If you earned all 1 of them
$180
fees checked 2026-08
30 hrs
30 hours — about 3 weeks at 10 hrs/wk

Not in the total: Bachelor's Degree — cost varies by institution.

Lower signal for this role

Credentials that barely appeared in this sample. That is not a claim they are worthless — plenty are valuable for a different job, a different city, or a promotion later. It is a claim that employers here mostly did not ask.

What the official taxonomy says

O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.

Education reported by people doing this job
40%reported bachelor’s degree
  • Bachelor’s degree40%
  • High school diploma or equivalent15%
  • Post-secondary certificate15%

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

O*NET 11-9021.00 · pulled 2026-09-01 · percentages are of surveyed workers, each rounded separately, so they need not total 100

What it pays

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.

$69,690
10th percentile
$114,990
median
$189,440
90th percentile

Every credential above costs $180 — less than a day's pay at the median.

Who was hiring

Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.

SpaceX · Latitude Inc · City of New York · Redwood Materials · Cogent Talent Solutions · Energy Project Solutions · SpawGlass · 360 IT Professionals · Anduril Industries · Collabera · Relativity Space · SBT Global · 1X · Anthropic · Boyd Gaming · Chandos · Curaleaf · DN Tanks (DN LLC) · HelloFresh · Luminis Health · Otterbein SeniorLife · PROCON · Qualdoc · Scout Motors

Next

  • Roast and Resolve — Now aim your résumé at this target. Free roast, paid rewrite.
  • Synap — Two-minute daily lessons to drill the skills underneath the credential.