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Tag: workforce

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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Examining the puzzles and concerns over the latest construction output figures

Examining the puzzles and concerns over the latest construction output figures

The Office for National Statistics output figures released on Friday strongly suggest construction is heading for a technical recession. Put another way, recorded output will need major revisions or an exceptional boost in March if we are not to see two successive quarters of decline. The data suggest output in both January and February, when adjusted for inflation and seasonal factors, was lower than for any month since December 2013. On its current trajectory we are looking at a recorded…

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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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A £20 billion repair bill to fix the UK construction industry after the recession

A £20 billion repair bill to fix the UK construction industry after the recession

Just what has been the cost to construction of the recession? Could and should policymakers have made the slump in activity less painful? Were there better policy options? These questions need desperate attention. Mistakes were made. Bad and avoidable mistakes, in my view. Lessons must be learned. Construction is a strategic industry. Having a construction industry is not an option for any nation. That makes it special, like health, education or defence. Recessions can disproportionately hit construction. The damage, however, will…

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More a house-building recovery than a construction recovery – so far at least

More a house-building recovery than a construction recovery – so far at least

Construction output grew 0.6% in the first quarter of this year. That’s up on an earlier estimate of 0.3% in the first release of the GDP figures. Work done in the first three month was 5.4% more than in the same period a year earlier. That’s the very encouraging headline story from the latest ONS construction output data. And we can be more encouraged given the iffier-than-normal weather at the start of this year. This provides reasons to think that…

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The sorry side of the upswing in construction and why posturing politicians got it wrong again

The sorry side of the upswing in construction and why posturing politicians got it wrong again

For me there’s something dreadfully sad about the timing of the Government’s announcement that it is backing £36 billion worth of planned investment for 2014 and 2015. It will, say the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, support 150,000 construction jobs. This should be greeted with unfettered joy. But I’m afraid I can’t see it that way. How do I see it? Well imagine Government leading a construction industry motorcade, ignoring the road ahead, too busy scanning the crowd…

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