Per-MW pricing, regional variance, and cost drivers for owners scoping hyperscale & AI builds.
Salary benchmarks across the 14 mission-critical disciplines.
PROJECTS
16 active U.S. mine, concentrator, smelter, and refinery builds — copper, lithium, rare earths, antimony, graphite, and aluminum — tracked by region, owner, and status, with the roles each program is hiring.
Use the navigation below to jump directly to the regional section you want. Each section is organized by status and program type.
Five programs whose scale, funding, or first-of-kind profile mark them as defining builds for the 2025–2032 mining and critical minerals construction cycle.
The defining build of the U.S. lithium wave. Lithium Americas and GM are delivering Phase 1 of Thacker Pass — open-pit mine, sulfuric-acid plant, and lithium-carbonate processing train — with detailed engineering past 95%, more than $1.2B in DOE loan advances drawn, and over 1,600 workers on site climbing past 2,000 by year-end. Structural steel and process mechanical work are accelerating toward late-2027 mechanical completion, and the operations-readiness hiring clock is already running.
After a two-decade permitting saga, the federal land exchange for one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world was recorded in March 2026 — and Resolution is committing $500M over the next two years as shaft rehabilitation and early works ramp at the historic Magma mine. At full build, block-cave development more than a mile underground could supply up to a quarter of U.S. copper demand.
The first mining project ever added to the federal FAST-41 permitting dashboard is now roughly halfway built on private land — a $3.3B underground zinc-lead-silver mine with federally designated critical-mineral manganese in the wings. Dual-shaft development, a full concentrator scope, and a 2028 first-production target make Hermosa the deepest hiring bench in the Arizona district.
America’s rare-earth champion is building at both ends of the supply chain — expanded heavy rare-earth separation at the Mountain Pass mine backed by a $150M DoD loan, and magnet production at the Independence facility in Fort Worth feeding a 10-year DoD partnership with guaranteed offtake. The next leg, the $1.25B 10X magnet campus in Northlake, Texas, pushes planned U.S. magnet capacity to roughly 10,000 tonnes.
The first new U.S. primary aluminum smelter since 1980 — a 750,000-tonne-per-year joint venture on the Tulsa port corridor, with construction targeted to start by the end of 2026 pending power negotiations and detailed engineering. Four thousand construction jobs, a thousand permanent, and a potline-and-casthouse scope no active U.S. delivery bench has built in a generation.
Every program below is compiled from public filings, owner announcements, and federal records — organized by region, with owner, scope, status, and the roles each build is actually hiring for.
One of only two known lithium-boron deposits on earth, federally permitted and carrying a $996M DOE loan — with the permit upheld in court in 2026. Ioneer is targeting a final investment decision in late 2026, with a roughly two-year open-pit mine and processing build to follow; services and engineering partnerships are already being signed.
Hudbay’s fully state-permitted copper project cleared its biggest financing hurdle in January 2026, when Mitsubishi closed a $600M investment for 30% of the joint venture. Definitive feasibility and detailed engineering are funded through sanction, with a build decision expected in 2026 — and a multi-year open-pit, concentrator, and SX/EW construction program behind it.
The first new U.S. copper production from a greenfield facility since 2008. Florence’s in-situ recovery wellfield and SX/EW plant harvested first cathode in early 2026 and is ramping toward 85 million pounds a year — a commissioning-and-operations hiring story now, with wellfield drilling continuing through ramp.
The first large-scale U.S. lithium refinery reached full integrated operation in early 2026 — roughly $1B of kilns, conversion, and finishing capacity turning spodumene into battery-grade lithium hydroxide on the Gulf Coast, on an acid-free flowsheet running at industrial scale for the first time anywhere.
The largest U.S. rare-earth magnet manufacturing project in history — a 120-acre campus ten miles from MP’s operating Independence plant in Fort Worth, with 100% of output committed to defense and commercial buyers under MP’s 10-year DoD partnership. Site development and long-lead procurement precede a construction ramp toward 2028 commissioning.
ExxonMobil has finished appraisal drilling across its Smackover brine acreage and cleared its Arkansas royalty milestone — the runway to a direct-lithium-extraction and on-site conversion complex targeting first production in 2027. Oil-and-gas drilling methods up front, chemical-plant construction behind, and a second wave of Smackover operators building on the same play.
The only U.S. mine permitted to produce antimony at defense scale. After a federal court denied an injunction motion in May 2026, Perpetua pushed critical-path work into the 2026 field season — led by the Burntlog access route — toward 2029 gold and antimony production. Remote Idaho backcountry, rotation-based crews, and legacy-site restoration built into the scope.
America’s antimony processing revival in miniature — a new smelter commissioned furnace by furnace through 2026, lifting Thompson Falls capacity roughly sixfold to more than 300 tons a month, funded in part by a $27M Department of War award. Small capex, outsized strategic weight, and a template for the metallurgical restarts queued nationwide.
One of North America’s richest hard-rock lithium deposits is inching back toward production: the historic pit was dewatered in early 2026, and the processing-plant project became the first in North Carolina to complete FAST-41 federal permitting in March. State and local permits and a phased construction plan are still ahead — a restart moving on policy support and lithium-price reality at once.
The anchor project of the Southwest Georgia battery corridor — an $800M, 1.5-million-square-foot synthetic graphite plant planned at Bainbridge’s Downrange Industrial Park. The buildout has been re-phased as financing and trade policy settle, with a smaller first phase targeted ahead of full-scale production — timing any hiring plan here has to respect honestly.
North America’s first large-scale synthetic graphite plant is producing in Chattanooga and building toward 31,500 tonnes a year under a $754.8M DOE loan commitment — mass production of industrial-grade graphite in 2026, battery-grade anode material for Panasonic targeted from 2027. Furnace installation and commissioning waves keep the site hiring through 2028.
Every program shown is compiled from public filings, owner and agency announcements, DOE and DoD funding records, and our own market mapping across the segment. We surface programs with confirmed owner sponsorship at announcement, permitting, construction, commissioning, or recently-completed stages.
To appear in the tracker, a program must meet at least three of the following criteria:
We refresh the tracker as programs are announced, status changes occur, or capacity and funding figures are updated. The tracker is maintained by iRecruit.co’s research team in coordination with our market-mapping work across the buildout — it maps where hiring is concentrating. Verify all data before referencing in formal documents. Some program specifics (capacity figures, $ values, contractor assignments, timelines) may have evolved since compilation.
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