One in seven migrant workers in construction have left the industry over the last three years, according to the Construction Industry Training Board’s (CITB) latest annual migration report.
Migration in UK Construction 2021 found that the number of migrant workers in the industry fell by 8.3% in 2020, with 25,000 fewer workers in the sector than in 2019, although this was in the context of the whole industry shrinking by a similar percentage.
Over the past three years, however, the number of migrant workers in construction dropped by 15% from more than 360,000 to 280,000, the equivalent of one in every seven migrant workers.
Meanwhile, official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed year-on-year wage rises, including bonuses and arrears peaked at +15.1% nationwide in May 2021. The figures continued to record an above-average +6% in September 2021, against a whole economy reading of +4%, supporting anecdotal evidence that labour shortages are driving up prices.
In London, where half of the construction workforce are migrant workers, the number fell by 15%, from 145,000 in 2019 to 125,000 in 2020.
CITB’s research found that many employers, particularly SMEs, are not engaging with the Points-Based Immigration System (PBIS) licence scheme to enable them to hire non-UK born workers. In addition, several large- and medium-sized employers were concerned that some skilled trades were not accessible through the skilled worker visa, including dryliners, asbestos workers and insulators.
Steve Radley, director of policy at CITB, said: “The transition out of the EU and into a new immigration system was always going to be difficult and the pandemic and interrupted supplies of materials has intensified skills and cost pressures. We know that developing homegrown talent will be at the heart of addressing these skills challenges and that government is taking action to grow apprenticeships and to get more college students into construction jobs.
“To ensure the industry can continue to deliver the ambitious programme of infrastructure investment and development, it is vital that we have a Points-Based Immigration System that can respond rapidly to changing pressures.”
“Employer investment in key skill areas such as apprenticeships is recovering and should improve further in 2022. But for many, their struggle to deliver on the current workloads is hampering their ability to free up time to invest in training just when it’s most needed.”
Suzannah Nichol, chief executive of Build UK, said: “As construction looks to lead the economic recovery, the government is rightly investing in training and reskilling the UK workforce whilst the industry develops better routes for new entrants. We welcomed the recent commitments in the Autumn Budget to improve skills and recruit talent, but these will all take time to come to fruition and we are being asked to build now, not in 12 months.
“To ensure the industry can continue to deliver the ambitious programme of infrastructure investment and development, it is vital that we have a Points-Based Immigration System that can respond rapidly to changing pressures, with a clear path for the industry to raise these with government.”
Alasdair Reisner, chief executive of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA), said: “Our members continue to experience very challenging conditions for recruitment and retention of workers. The likely outcome of this will be that those areas that have historically had higher levels of migrant labour, and generally higher salaries, such as London and the South East, will now pull resource from the rest of the country, exacerbating skills difficulties nationwide."
