{"id":532553,"date":"2025-11-12T11:41:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T11:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=532553"},"modified":"2025-11-12T14:07:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T14:07:54","slug":"sector-less-flexible-as-self-employed-workforce-drops-by-a-fifth-in-six-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/skills\/sector-less-flexible-as-self-employed-workforce-drops-by-a-fifth-in-six-years-12-11-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Sector \u2018less flexible\u2019 as self-employed workforce drops by a fifth in six years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sector leaders have warned that a 20 per cent drop in the number of self-employed contractors over the past six years will have an impact on the industry\u2019s flexibility.<\/p>\n<p>It comes as data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Tuesday (11 November) showed there were 756,000 self-employed workers in the construction industry in the third quarter of 2025 \u2013 a reduction of 17.9 per cent on the 920,000 self-employed sector workers in the third quarter of 2019.<\/p>\n<p>David Crosthwaite, chief economist at the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS), said that a combination of Brexit, the pandemic and sector retirements was to blame.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat loss of flexibility makes it harder for the sector to respond to changes in demand,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The number of self-employed workers has also decreased since the second quarter of 2025, when the figure stood at 767,000.<\/p>\n<p>The number of people employed directly in the sector is also down since 2019, by about 8.7 per cent from 1.41 million to 1.28 million.<\/p>\n<p>Crosthwaite said the reduction in employment across the industry \u2013 of 12 per cent \u2013 is a \u201cstark reminder of how far capacity has eroded\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt adds to a difficult economic mix where inflation remains elevated and growth has stalled,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Freedom of movement from the EU to the UK ended in January 2021, which contributed to more\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/sections\/long-reads\/how-is-the-industry-coping-with-post-brexit-labour-changes-10-08-2022\/\">than 240,000 workers leaving the construction industry between<\/a> the first quarters of 2019 and 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Eldred, deputy chief executive at the Electrical Contractors\u2019 Association, said: \u201cThe decline in the built environment workforce since 2019 requires urgent and ambitious joint action between government and trade sectors if there is to be any hope at all of progress on priorities such as clean energy, new housing and retrofit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The steep drop-off in self-employed workers \u201cmost likely reflects the exodus of skilled EU workers as a consequence of Covid and Brexit, rather than any positive rebalancing of employment practices within the industry\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n<p>He said UK procurement, tax, social security and employment rights law has incentivised the \u201cover-reliance on subcontracting and self-employment\u201d in the UK, much more than other developed countries, reducing the sector\u2019s capacity and willingness to train and recruit more staff.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnless and until this situation changes, talk of regrowing a properly trained domestic workforce is likely to remain just talk,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The data also shows, however, that the number of women working in the sector has increased by 6.7 per cent since the third quarter of 2019, from 297,000 to 317,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sector leaders have warned that a 20 per cent drop in the number of self-employed contractors over the past six years will have an impact on the industry\u2019s flexibility. It comes as data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Tuesday (11 November) showed there were 756,000 self-employed workers in the construction industry &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90643,"featured_media":490968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78193,575,57171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data","category-skills","category-supply-chain","issue-online-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.7 (Yoast SEO v26.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sector \u2018less flexible\u2019 as self-employed workforce drops by a fifth in six years | Construction News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sector leaders have warned that a 20 per cent drop 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