Taking a deep dive into quarterly data released for the UK labour market, Jim McClelland challenges the construction industry to face the facts, all two million of them.
When asked to comment on plans and policy, the favourite phrase on the lips of every politician, banker, and CEO today is that any response will be ‘data dependent’. The party line is that the facts will decide the future. So, for construction, it is time for a reality check.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just updated its overview of the UK labour market with the recent release of the latest quarterly dataset (Q2 2026). Tracking key trends, this data provides estimates of employment, self-employment and unemployment, along with insights around economic inactivity, and other related statistics.
For those really wanting to understand the sector specifics, the ONS also provides a breakdown of the headline figures by industry in the form of multiple Excel spreadsheets.
So, crunching the numbers, what does the deep-dive data actually tell us?
In terms of growth though, the case for construction gets worse, not better
Jim McClelland Sustainable futurist, editor, journalist and speaker
4 in 10 self-employed
Well, topline estimates show that a total of just over two million people (2,060,284) worked in construction overall in the last quarter, down only ever so slightly year-on-year (-0.2%).
Interestingly, it is the employed cohort of 1,292,315 that accounts for all the quarterly drop in its entirety (and more), with numbers under that tab down roughly 0.3% on Q2 2025.
By contrast, the proportion of self-employed workers in construction was estimated to have risen fractionally over the last 12 months, up around 0.1% to 767,969.
This means the self-employed now make up more than 37% of the workforce in the sector.
So, what does all this say about the health of the industry and its prospects?
New business in short supply
Well, on the face of it, modest dips of less than 1% could easily be interpreted as showing no significant change, especially when you allow for such macro factors as geopolitics, or the disruptive effects on labour markets of breakthroughs in automation and AI.
In terms of growth, though, the case for construction unfortunately gets worse, not better.
The most recent official data on construction output in the UK showed a slight fall for June 2026, with every month in the quarter marginally poorer than the last.
Again, the drop is small overall, measured in fractions of a percent.
What is more worrying is that this dip in monthly output in June can be attributed solely to a decrease in new work, which fell by 0.3%. Moreover, new orders in construction slumped in total by 11.8% (£1,232M) in Q2 2026, compared with Q1.
The future does not look rosy.
Gender diversity is down
As if the big picture for construction was not unsettling enough, zooming in on workforce demographics and diversity is where alarm bells should really start to ring for the industry.
Firstly, the gender split remains poor and is headed in the wrong direction.
In Q2 2026, women made up only 14.8% of the workforce, down from 15.1% year-on-year. Numbering just 305,850 in total, scarcely 1 in 7 people in construction today are female.
Secondly, the proportion of industry workers from ethnic minority backgrounds is even lower, typically reported as being somewhere in the order of merely 5-6%.
The third issue is age – but here, the bifurcation in the data makes for a K-shaped market.
Age is going K-shaped
The good news is to be found at the youthful end of the spectrum, with new data revealing that 25% of all CSCS cards are now held by individuals under 30 (up from 17% in 2021).
Furthermore, the gathering of dedicated data introduced two years ago shows that the share of cards scanned belonging to skilled and advanced workers in particular has jumped dramatically from just 27% back in 2023, to over 39% by 2025.
It should be noted that the ending of ‘grandfather rights’ for cards in 2024 was thought to have resulted in some of the older workers allowing their Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) registration to lapse, rather than enrolling for qualifications and courses.
This may have skewed registration figures as more senior workers either retired early, switched to smaller firms, or went self-employed, to escape assessment and training.
In terms of looming skills shortages though, annual analysis by Places for People suggests that more than 35% of the workforce was still over the age of 50 in 2025.
Drilling down by trade, it has also been claimed that the average bricklayer is 52, with 12% of colleagues over 60. Plumbers are also said to be over 50, on average.
Reality check: Time to face facts
It is hard to put a positive spin on the data story overall; some facts are there to be faced.
If it continues to fail on diversity and job creation, construction faces a future workforce that is not only ‘pale, male and stale’, but shrinking; with new-business wins in short supply.
In truth, hotspots such as heat pumps look like the exception to a rule of diminishing returns at present – despite some sector forecasts for recovery, plus a new Prime Minister calling for the "biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-War period”.
There are, though, more than two million really good reasons why things must change, for the better; and every single one of them currently earns their living working in construction.
Jim McClelland is a sustainable futurist, editor, journalist and speaker
