In the quarter before Covid hit the UK economy, there were 27,000 vacancies in the construction sector.That figure was almost 4 per cent higher than in October 2016, when Mark Farmer released his landmark report on the industry’s labour model, which warned of a potential “capacity shrinkage that would render the industry incapable of delivering the levels of GDP historically seen”.
The latest set of official figures shows that the number of vacancies in the sector has risen a further 44 per cent – to 39,000 – since the start of 2020.
That rise would be serious enough for the sector. But competition for staff is now even stiffer than it was, with the overall number of vacancies across the economy up by 238,000.
Manufacturing alone has seen an increase of 17,000. while the hotel and restaurant trade now has a labour gap of 43,000 workers.
The challenges around skills are not confined to quantity, but also extend to quality.
In a recent long read article, Construction News investigated the progress being made on the ambitious process to regulate competence in the sector triggered in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy.
We discovered that, while defining and enforcing competence is far from straightforward, there really will be no place to hide for firms that are used to cutting corners in order to undercut their competitors.
If these challenges were not big enough, the sector now has a significant new source of work to address.
The government has, to its credit, provided billions in funding to pay for decarbonising the domestic housing sector. But, as another CN long read discovered, getting that money out of the door is easier said than done. As one commentator put it: “We’ve just created a market for tens of thousands of wall insulation projects without developing a supply chain of people to deliver it.”
The need to recruit, train and retain competent construction staff has never been more pressing, but, as the data indicates, it has rarely been more difficult.
Of course, the impact of Brexit cannot be ignored here. While the government is taking some action – in particular to make it easier for firms to bring in roofers from abroad – it is clear that, under the current government, foreign recruitment will remain significantly harder than it once was.
A separate CN long read article illustrates one potential untapped labour source. We meet a group of trainee professional footballers being given a taste of the building trade, offering a move into the industry if their footballing dreams fail to work out.
Given the reduction in cheap and easy options from abroad, such initiatives – tapping the potential of British working-class youth – could provide a lifeline for firms in the sector.
This hardhatNEWS article was first published by the Construction News
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