Federal stimulus funds pumped into the building and construction industry have eased the employment downturn, but this could be short-lived according to the latest Clarius Skills Index.
The Index is the only measure of underlying demand and supply of skilled labour and it fell 0.4 points to 99 in the September quarter. This equates to a surplus of 1,000 building and engineering professionals, including architects, surveyors and civil engineers.
While the Index remains significantly lower than the 103.7 recorded at the same time last year, the decline is a considerable improvement on March where the Index lost 2.6 points.
Building and engineering associate professionals dropped 0.3 points to 99.1 in September compared to June with an oversupply of 1,000 workers. Construction tradespersons fell by 0.8 points to 96.7 over the same period, recording an oversupply of 5,000 workers.
A score of 100 indicates equal tension between labour supply and demand. Anything greater than 105 on the skills shortage side of the Index is regarded as extreme. A score of 95 to 98 is moderate.
Nathan Crawford-Condie from Southtech Personnel, a subsidiary of Clarius Group, says "While Canberra has been extremely helpful, the reality is that most of the stimulus money in the market today is for short term projects of up to six months. Beyond Christmas, there's not a lot of work in the pipeline for many companies."
However, there are some positive signs emerging with an increased demand for building estimators, suggesting the big construction firms are expecting to see an increase in projects on their books in the coming months.
"Overall, however, there's not a lot of recruitment happening at present but we are hopeful these very early signs auger well for 2010 in the all important commercial sector," Crawford-Condie says.
The Index also showed a diminished supply of labour in all three categories in the September quarter, despite the overall fall in the Index. Labour supply for building and engineering professionals was 169,000 workers in September compared to 193,000 in March. Similar falls over the same period were experienced in the associate professional category (121,000 to 116,000) and construction trades (398,000 to 368,000).
"The downturn has meant people have left the building and construction industry after they were laid-off. Demographically, this is a major problem because once business gets back to growth, the pool of workers will be diminished while many of those professionals available are heading towards retirement," he says.
