RE: correction? what correction?26 Jun 2021 12:25
26th. June 2001 10.01 AM
So much work to do, so few workers to do it
By Tom Lowe
The good news for construction is that post-lockdown there is now burgeoning demand. The bad news is that there are nowhere near enough people to do the work
Azad Azam is the founder of Design Plan Build (DPB), a £1.3m turnover contractor which builds mostly small housing schemes in London. Over the past six weeks he has been trying to increase his 16-strong workforce by 11 to take on a larger project than usual, a 47-home apartment scheme in Walthamstow. He had already priced his bid based on his expectations of how much it would cost to hire the extra workers, but the post-lockdown labour market had other ideas.
“We just can’t get them,” he says. “The prices that people are asking now, and the amount that we’ll need to pay to get people to leave where they’re working and come to us, makes it uneconomical”. Last week, he met the client and said that he would have to turn the job down because he could not get the resources. “There’s a massive, massive labour shortage,” he says.
It's only a UK snapshot. As against that, they're coming back. But presumably to their existing employers. So on balance the issue is extra demand. Maybe not a bad problem to have for Sig, provided they can fulfil orders now or in the future.
"The number of furloughed construction workers fell by 15% in March - 3% more than the national average. The latest HMRC data shows that there were around 196,000 workers in construction furloughed at the end of March, compared to over 230,000 at the end of February. Published 6 May 2021
…
Sign In
Follow the stocks
