There's more to be done
Notable collaborative initiatives between industry, education providers, trade bodies and government have made inroads. But the current skills picture suggests there is much work still to be done.
There were 28,000 job vacancies in the last quarter of 2020, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data – a figure which increased by more than 25% compared to earlier in the year. This is far from a short-term spike in demand.
Mark Farmer’s seminal 2016 ‘Modernise or die’ review into the construction industry predicted that, based on the current age of the workforce and lack of new entrants, almost one in four construction workers could exit the sector within a decade.
A more recent, 2019, estimate from the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) suggests that there is still serious work to do to address the skills shortage. Its report estimated the industry will require an additional 168,500 workers by 2023.
A CITB 2018 report into the sector’s ageing workforce highlighted that 48,000 workers over the age of 50 leave the sector each year – around 6.5% of the total workforce.
The productivity gains and capacity offered by increased automation, on-site exoskeletons, or offsite construction techniques will not be sufficient to redress this shortfall; not least because harnessing this innovation requires new skills.
This must be met by both upskilling the existing workforce and conveying the variety of new digitally-focussed roles available.
A 2018 Construction Leadership Council (CLC) report predicted that the UK’s departure from the European Union would further worsen the skills shortage, with a restriction on the free movement of workers; reporting that 8% of the UK construction workforce were mainly from the EU / European Economic Area.
More Recent ONS data confirms the troubling picture: more than one in four EU-born workers left the industry between the end of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020.
