There have been fears that companies would refrain from hiring new employees until uncertainty around foreign nationals working the UK was resolved as part of the Brexit negotiations. Nearly 12% of the 2.1 million construction workers in the UK come from abroad, mainly from the EU.
Liverpool has seen the sharpest rise in available construction jobs one year on from the Brexit referendum. Liverpool has experienced a 21.5% increase in the number of construction jobs year on year, which is in stark contrast to other major UK cities.
Reading has been impacted by a 21.7% decrease in available construction jobs, according to the latest data from Job Market Insights – which has an 85% representation of the UK job market. The population of Reading voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU with 58% for Remain and 42% for Leave.
London has experienced a decline of 10.8% of jobs in the construction industry when compared to before the Brexit referendum last year.
The construction market in the north of England is set to experience the highest construction cost price inflation in the UK outside of London this year – at 3.6% compared to 2.9% in 2016. By comparison, southern and central England are set to see construction price inflation fall from 3.5% to 2% and 3.8% to 3.5% respectively.
Gary Fenn, Insight Analyst at Fish4jobs states, “We are now one year on from the Brexit referendum, and it’s intriguing to see the effect it has had on the job market across the UK. There has been a lot of uncertainty for businesses and employees which has clearly impacted the construction job market differently across the UK.”
In Q1, the UK was reported as having the slowest economic growth out of all the G7 countries. UK growth slumped to just 0.2 per cent in the January-March period, also behind Germany (0.6 per cent), Japan (0.5 per cent) France (0.4 per cent) and the US (0.3 per cent) and equal with Italy (0.2 per cent).
