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Tag: job losses

Just how fast is the construction industry growing?

Just how fast is the construction industry growing?

This is a question that’s puzzling plenty of experts in the field at the moment. The trade surveys suggest strong and continued growth. The official data suggests a slowdown recently. So let’s look at the muddle of data. The Construction Products Association earlier this week released the latest Construction Trade Survey, which pulls together a range of survey data from material suppliers, contractors, subcontractors and small builders. Its headline said activity had increased for eight straight quarters. Most of the…

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Rise in self-employment eases as construction employment prospects improve

Rise in self-employment eases as construction employment prospects improve

The latest construction-sector labour market data is encouraging, if you are a worker that is. The data show the level of employment at the end of last year was at its highest since 2009. Unemployed former construction workers are now as thin on the ground as they were in the best of times before the recession. And wages appear to be steadily improving. The earnings data suggest total average earnings within construction were up 3.6% on a year ago. As…

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Construction’s daunting challenge: Find one million new recruits in a decade

Construction’s daunting challenge: Find one million new recruits in a decade

Construction will see faster employment growth than any other of the six major business sectors, according to projections by UK Commission for Employment and Skills. Between 2012 and 2022 the average annual rate of expansion in the construction workforce is put at 1.4%. That compares with 0.6% for the economy as a whole (see top graph). Even when you look at the economy divided more finely into 22 sectors, construction still comes out third, after information technology and electricity and…

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Déjà vu, predictability and the challenge to fill the construction skills gap

Déjà vu, predictability and the challenge to fill the construction skills gap

UK construction needs 44,690 new recruits a year for the next four years at least, says CITB following its Construction Skills Network research. Last year it put the estimated annual recruitment requirement at 36,400. The year before, it estimated 29,050. The pressure seems to be growing. Set this against the 7,280 apprentices completing in England in 2013 and the picture looks really rather depressing. It’s hard not to be maddened by the inevitability of this rapidly growing workforce problem. I’ve…

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What do we need more: people to build buildings or people to deal in them?

What do we need more: people to build buildings or people to deal in them?

Here’s a question posed by the labour market figures: Why since the recession hit do we have more dealers in buildings and fewer people building them? From the heady pre-recession days there seems to have been a 17% expansion in employment among dealers in buildings while employment among builders of buildings has shrunk 20%? That seems to be what the employment data tables in the ONS labour market data release tell us. Despite talk of a strong revival in construction,…

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How old is the average construction worker?

How old is the average construction worker?

A figure keeps cropping up that suggests the average age of a construction worker is in the 50s and the industry is getting older by the day. That makes for a good scare story. But is it true? The story came up again in a construction economics meeting I was at last week. One anecdote suggested the faces on site looked 10 years older than 10 years ago. Could this be real, the effects of recession-related stress on hard-working construction…

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Construction jobs growth appears solid but not spectacular

Construction jobs growth appears solid but not spectacular

The number of people employed in construction is up 3.3% on a year ago, according to the latest ONS Labour Market data. This finding underlines official data showing a steady rise of the industry from recession. Output in the second quarter was up 4.5% up on a year ago. The growth in workloads is solid, but by no means a boom-time level, and like output the rise in employment stalled in the second quarter. There are of course always reasons…

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Cracks are already appearing in the Government strategy on the building materials trade gap

Cracks are already appearing in the Government strategy on the building materials trade gap

The construction industry imports about 10% of its output value in building materials and seems to have done all my adult life at least. Admittedly the figures are a bit ropey, but the pattern looks pretty clear from the top graph. This is important, because the Government’s rather suspect industrial strategy (pdf) for construction has as one of its big targets a 50% cut in the building materials trade gap by 2025. Looking at the current data I reckon that means,…

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Women lead the charge as construction employment rises

Women lead the charge as construction employment rises

Employment in construction grew in the final months of last year 2.6% relative to the same period a year earlier, according to the latest ONS data, providing further evidence of an expanding industry. The figures suggest there were about 56,000 more people working in construction at the end of last year than at the end of the year before. As we can see from the top graph there is a slight rise in employment that corresponds to a rise in…

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Jobs data shows the very uneven recovery for construction

Jobs data shows the very uneven recovery for construction

The latest set of Office for National Statistics figures for jobs in the economy does provide reason to be encouraged. The national construction jobs figures provide relief in that there were at least as many jobs in September this year as last. Indeed the figure of 2,070,000 workforce jobs (seasonally adjusted) is the highest for three years. So we may be seeing a turning point with potentially sustained growth in employment in the coming months. Though in fairness most of…

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