Skills to build: creating the houses and jobs our communities need

Among other things, it finds that:

• Government has set out an ambitious house building and infrastructure programme which will put demands on the construction industry. 

• Employment in the construction sector is growing at a slower rate than in the economy as a whole despite it being a major contributor to growth. Record low numbers of construction workers are unemployed, suggesting little spare labour capacity. 

• The construction industry’s forecasted annual recruitment needs have increased for the last three years consecutively, up from 29,050 a year in 2013, to 44,690 a year from 2015. 

• More than half (56 per cent) of skilled trade vacancies in the construction sector were hard-to-fill in 2013, up from 46 per cent in 2011. In contrast, just 19 per cent of skilled trade vacancies across the economy were hard-to-fill, down from 21 per cent in 2011.