The Headline Number: 64% Slow-Paid, a 51-Day Average
64% of subcontractors reported being slow-paid by general contractors, with an average days-sales-outstanding of 51 days, according to Billd’s 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report. That is a direct, named, dated figure from Billd’s own current-year report, the newest data point in the private-tracker source class construction payment research relies on.
A 51-day average DSO means a subcontractor who completes work today typically waits closer to two months to collect payment for it, a real, structural cash-flow gap between doing the work and getting paid for it that has nothing to do with whether the underlying business is healthy.
Why This Is a Private Tracker Figure, Not a Government Statistic
Billd is a private company, not a government agency or a trade association, and this figure comes from its own commissioned market research rather than a Census, BLS, or industry-body survey. This pass could not confirm the report’s full sample size or methodology disclosure, response count, survey window, or whether the data is self-reported versus platform-observed, from the accessible page content.
That caveat does not mean the figure is unreliable, it means it should be cited with Billd named explicitly as the source and the methodology-disclosure gap acknowledged, rather than presented as if it carried the same disclosed-methodology weight as a government release.
The Wider Range Reported Across the Same Source Class
Construction payment-delay research more broadly, across the wider private-tracker source class Billd’s own report belongs to, has described a broader days-sales-outstanding range of roughly 70 to 94 days, with a large majority of subcontractors reporting payment delays of 30 days or more. Billd’s own 51-day figure sits inside that broader range, offering rough internal consistency across at least two points in the same source class.
Those broader figures were not independently re-verified for this piece and trace to the same private-tracker source class as Billd’s own number, so they should be read as directional corroboration of the pattern, chronic slow payment across construction subcontracting, rather than as a second, independently confirmed hard statistic standing alongside Billd’s 64% and 51-day figures.
Why Payment Delay Drives Construction Toward MCA More Than Cost Does
This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic. Restaurants and trucking, covered elsewhere in this document’s own industry-statistics coverage, become MCA-heavy verticals largely because of cost pressure and small-operator structure respectively. Construction’s version of the same pattern is different: it is a timing problem, not primarily a cost or structure problem. A subcontractor can be running a genuinely profitable job and still be cash-poor for 51 days or more simply waiting on payment for work already completed.
That timing gap is exactly the problem MCA is structurally suited to bridge: a cash advance against future revenue, deployed to cover payroll and materials during the payment-delay window, rather than a longer-term loan sized around annual profitability.
What 51 Days of DSO Does to a Subcontractor’s Cash Position
A 51-day average DSO compounds against a subcontractor’s own obligations, which typically do not wait 51 days: payroll runs weekly or biweekly regardless of when the general contractor pays, and materials suppliers frequently expect payment on much shorter terms than the subcontractor is itself receiving from the job. That mismatch, short payment terms owed out against long payment terms coming in, is the mechanical source of the cash-flow gap this row’s own data documents.
The 64% figure above means this is not an edge case affecting a struggling minority of subcontractors, per Billd’s own report, it describes the majority experience across the segment surveyed.
Reading This Alongside the Other MCA-Heavy Verticals
Construction joins restaurants and trucking, both covered separately in this document’s own industry-statistics coverage, as a third recurring MCA-heavy vertical, each for a genuinely different underlying reason. Restaurants face cost-structure pressure, trucking is dominated by small-operator businesses without deep bank credit history, and construction subcontractors face a documented, chronic payment-timing gap between completing work and collecting for it.
All three point at the same underlying underwriting mismatch from different angles: real, demonstrable business activity that traditional, credit-history-driven bank underwriting is not well suited to evaluate on its own terms.
The Numbers
64% of subcontractors reported being slow-paid by general contractors, with an average days-sales-outstanding of 51 days.
A broader private-tracker source class has described a roughly 70-to-94-day DSO range, with a large majority of subcontractors reporting delays of 30 days or more (not independently re-verified for this piece).
Construction joins trucking (91.5% of carriers run 10 or fewer trucks) and restaurants (36% cost growth since 2019) as a third recurring MCA-heavy vertical, each for a different underlying reason.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Billd, 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report
- American Trucking Associations, Economics and Industry Data