The Labour Market - 2nd Quarter 1999
In the meantime, there has been no easing of the labour market situation facing FMB survey respondents. Indeed, the overall percentage of replies, weighted by size of firm, that say they have been experiencing difficulty in recruiting skilled operatives, to work either as direct employees or as sub-contractors, has risen from 50% last time to 56% this, with 39% citing problems with recruiting direct employees and 34% referring to difficulties in hiring sub-contractors. Both these latter two figures are higher than last time, the second of them more so that the first.
Once again, carpenters and joiners are the trade in respect of which firms are experiencing relatively the greatest recruitment difficulty. The percentage for direct employees is a point lower than last time, but still the highest for any skill, whereas that for carpenters and joiners hired as sub-contractors has gone up four points to become the highest for any skill.
|
|
|
The situation in respect of bricklayers is about the same overall, with a slightly lower percentage for recruitment of direct employees and a slightly higher one for hiring of sub-contractors, and the same comment may be applied in respect of plasterers. By comparison, the overall market for plumbers and heating and ventilation engineers appears to have eased a little.
In the first quarter, no other trades than those identified in Table 9 were causing difficulties, for either recruitment of direct employees or hiring of sub-contractors, to the extent that they were named by more than 5% of respondents nationally. This time, however, painters show up, with 4% of all respondents referring to difficulties in recruiting painters as direct employees and 7% to problems with obtaining their services as sub-contractors. There are double-digit percentages of respondents reporting difficulties with painters as sub-contractors in three of the nine regions, namely Eastern Counties, London and South Wales, and a double-digit figure for direct employment in the Midlands. By comparison, percentages for difficulties in recruiting electrical engineers, that were in double figures last time, in one column or the other, for three regions including London and Eastern Counties, are now lower.
The regional picture is generally similar to that observed in the results of the first quarter survey. The principal tightening, compared with three months earlier, is in the South West, where the proportion reporting difficulties has gone up to a half. This change is somewhat at odds with that region's figures for changes in workload and in employment; but in the Midlands, which displayed a similar imbalance between workload and employment trends and labour market indicators last time, the market for skilled construction labour seems slightly easier in the second quarter.
The situation in London appears a little tighter than before, mainly in respect of carpenters and joiners and of plumbers and H&V engineers, whilst in the Eastern Counties the market appears less tight than in the first quarter, despite the region's growth in workload, except in respect of carpenters and joiners and also, as noted above, painters.
It may be added that survey respondents' written-in comments on labour market conditions make it quite clear that, for many builders and contractors, the difficulties that they have encountered in looking to recruit skilled labour relate to finding people with the necessary levels of experience, and also of commitment to the job, as much as, if not more than the outright availability or the price of skilled labour.
First posted: 21 July 1999. Last modified: 20 January 2000.
|
|
