– Industry will need to hire approximately half a million people to meet demand
- A construction and civil engineering recruiter is warning the UK’s construction industry is facing a skills shortage that will “make 2007’s War for Talent look like a water fight”.
- Simon Harris, the head of construction recruitment at Randstad UK, says a combination of mega construction projects already underway in the UK and projects that are yet to begin — such as water infrastructure developments, the construction of the Lower Thames Crossing, the expansion of the National Grid, and the Stonehenge Tunnel — as well as the imminent resurgence of the housing building market, is set to intensify the current talent shortage and lead to “a brutal labour shortage”. Harris says existing projects — which include HS2, the Thames Tideway, and Hinkley Point — are already stretching the workforce.
- QUOTE: Simon Harris said: “HS2 alone employs a couple of percent of the UK’s entire construction workforce. Sizewell C is already hoovering up talent. Hinkley Point isn’t finished, and neither is the Thames Tideway Tunnel. The construction industry is already stretched thin. We have lost a lot of people from the house building side of the industry, in particular: the workforce has lost close to half a million people since 2008. There’s very little slack in the system.
“At the moment, it’s hard, but not impossible, to recruit. But the combination of mega construction projects already underway and projects that are yet to begin will intensify the current talent shortage and lead to a brutal labour shortage. Soon interest rates will dip and housebuilders will put their foot on the gas. The perfect storm will hit in 2026, when the Lower Thames Crossing finally kicks off. Construction employers without a bullet-proof long-term workforce plan will find the going very hard indeed. It will make the 2007 War for Talent look like a water fight. And who knows what the sector does when we break ground on the 1¼ mile Stonehenge tunnel and start overhauling eight miles of the A303.”
HEADCOUNT OVER TIME: The construction labour force was approximately 2.600,000 strong in 2008, before the sector began to haemorrhage talent. By the end of 2023, the sector was 465,000 workers smaller, employing 2,100,000 people.
