'Construction industry faces skills shortage'
26/06/2008(17:05)
The construction industry's aging workforce will leave it facing a serious skills shortage, it has been claimed.
According to sector skills council ConstructionSkills, the failure by employers to recruit evenly across different age groups has created a "work force time bomb", onrec.com reports.
The organisation claims that despite a 20 per cent increase in the number of construction workers since the early 1990s, the number of employees aged 60 and above has doubled during this period.
Furthermore, the number of construction workers aged 24 and under has decreased by 27 per cent during the same time frame.
As well as affecting manual labour, the aging workforce may see professional trades including architecture, mechanical and civil engineering lose around 20 per cent employees to retirement over the next ten years, the skills council claims.
ConstructionSkills' incoming chief executive Mark Farrar remarked: "We haven't had a workforce this old since the Second World War when the construction workforce was hit by conscription and severe labour shortages.
"It's time for employers to act. Construction faces a serious skills shortfall and yet we are turning away new recruits that the industry works hard to attract."
The government yesterday announced £133 million of investment in the UK construction industry to help solve skills shortages in the sector.
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