Barking up the wrong tree?

Is it finally time to accept that young people simply do not want to work in demolition and construction?

In the 1950s, young boys wanted to be train drivers, like Casey Jones on the TV.  In the 1960s, they wanted to be astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  More recently, young boys aspired to be - variously - footballers, app developers, crypto currency traders and YouTubers.  Changing jobs in changing times.  But one thing has not changed.  At no point in recent history has the ultimate “career du jour” been a role in demolition and construction.

This is not news.  The industry has long been aware that it was competing with better paid and more glamorous industry sectors for the attention of would-be workers.  And yet demolition and construction have continued to compete upon an uneven playing field; a field upon which it is out-matched and outgunned at every turn.  So, faced with a skills shortage that shows no signs of abating, has the time come to accept that - regardless of Whitney Houston’s claims - maybe the children are NOT our future?

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A recent report from the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) claims that the sector will need to attract 250,000 additional workers by 2028 if it is to meet anticipated demand.  If that number rings a bell with you, it should.  The CITB made precisely the same forecast in June 2022, only then it said they would be required by 2026.  The fact that neither it nor the industry it serves has dented that number in these past two years merely serves to underline the scale and complexity of the challenge and the paucity of the efforts to rise to it.

There have been calls for the reintroduction of vocational education in schools.  There have been attempts by individual contractors to engage with local schools and colleges.  The industry has exhibited at the Skills Show in the vain hope of drawing attention away from the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.  The industry has even called for help from social media influencers in an embarassing attempt to be “down with the kids”.  But two years after the CITB originally identified the quarter million person shortfall, that shortfall remains unchanged.