One in every four young Brits – 28% to be exact – wants to join construction as a career as per a survey conducted by CITB. This shows the massively growing popularity of construction among youth who just a couple of years ago weren’t so excited by it – with only 3 out of 100 youth giving it a thumbs up.

And the lack of sector knowledge – knowing how to get into this – among youth is the biggest impediment.

Here are some other challenges the industry must address to facilitate youth entry into construction.

• • Health and Safety concerns associated with the industry is keeping many people away. As many as 46% of young people – almost one in every two – see it as a reason not to enter the sector.

• • Though females are increasingly seeing construction as a viable career choice – with 34% of them responding in positive – we still have some work to do to make it female friendly. In contrast, 67% of male respondents – twice as much of females – said they would consider a career in construction.

• • Limited knowledge of construction sector in the UK among counselors is a big worry. And this is leading to the tendency of counselors to encourage lesser qualified people into construction. As per the survey, career counselors are more likely to give construction careers advice to those with lower qualifications than graduates and those with at least 4 A-levels – a consistent trend since 2014.

• • Two out of five (41%) school students were pushed by career counselors to go for a full fledged degree rather than a lowly construction qualification. This percentage reached 51% if the one seeking the advice was over 18 in age.

• • Only 45% of career counselors think of themselves as competent in providing career advice on construction. However almost all of them are looking forward to increased engagement with industry to develop their knowledge of construction.

• • Young people’s knowledge of the industry has increased and they now are more likely to view it as a decent and well paid career. From a list of 29 potential career paths which young people were asked to consider, construction and civil engineering found their way in top 10 with ranks of seventh and eighth respectively.

The survey was conducted on 1,000 young people, 500 parents and 800 guidance career professionals from across the country.

Source: CITB

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