Simon Buultjens has had to delay projects and turn down business at his commercial construction company due to a shortage of concreters, bricklayers and project managers.he needed to hire another five to 10 employees because his 30 or so existing staff were struggling to keep up with demand.
The commission, which said there were no automatic consequences of an occupation being found to be in shortage, found the number of occupations with a lack of workers jumped from 153 to 286 over the past year.And in a sign of the worsening labour crunch in construction, 26 per cent of labourer occupations were found to be in shortage this year – up from 0 per cent the year before.
“The number of engineering occupations on the list is concerning. There are over 1000 engineering positions that need to be filled along with many in geology and trades,” she said. “Over the last couple of years builders have faced considerable challenges sourcing materials, dealing with escalating costs, and the uncertainty around the availability of trades workers has added further complexity to their scheduling of work on-site,” said Geordan Murray, HIA’s executive director of industry policy.