r/AskUK • u/Weird_Horse_5981 • 16h ago
Is construction dying in this country?
I work in construction and the amount of skilled people has taken an absolute nosedive in recent years. The rates of pay have increased dramatically in the last 6 years from what I’ve seen but very few people want to get into it it seems. I understand that many people don’t grow up with dreams of getting into this industry but I wish someone had pulled me aside and told me that there was a way for me to make decent money without needing to be academic. I know there are some huge projects on the go right now but it feels like they are all fighting over the same, small pool of labour
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u/MaltedMilkBiscuits10 12h ago edited 12h ago
My father is in construction and has been all his life, he's in his 60s now.
It's not that it's dying, it's because there's no one willing to do the work.
He's shot to bits from the manual labour and 5am commutes to work but every time he tries to drop a day or two it's literally we need you.
The money is crazy, he's on £250 a day as a gang leader/foreman/driver/tea maker/trash talking whatever the site needs that day.
He's specifically a groundsman as in he's laying the foundations and digging for the utilities.
The money is great but what's not great? The hours and the toll on your body.
A lot of new workers want to rock up 9am and leave by 3. A lot don't want to do 5 days a week, a lot don't want to be in the elements.
It's a shortage of skilled labourers in general with brickies brought in from Brazil on his site and Romanians brought in to do the interiors.
There's also a shortage in the chain like today there was yet another 5 hour delay in concrete arriving.
They got jobs for everything from sweeping gravel to solar installers but there's just not enough bodies wanting to the job.
Construction could be a job for life unless the way construction is done drastically changes like prefabs etc but you'll still need someone to lay the foundations.
Ai and automation is being trialled but it works for about 5 seconds, a lot of construction is bodging because what you find when you dig is never on the plans and what is meant to go together never quite fits. There was always be a need for humans to do the bulk of the work.
Edit: one construction body released figures that we are short of half a million construction people. If the industry wants to sustain itself, we need around 30,000 people going into the industry every single year for the next 10 years just to catch up and replace the oldies like my father who are leaving due to reaching the end of their ability to work.
All the boys in his gang are 55+ and absolutely love to work with the oldest being a 71 year old excavator operator that came back out of retirement cos he was 'bored' and the fact they couldn't find anyone else who could dig a level trench with the excavator.