CITB improves forecast

The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has announced improvements to its future employment and training forecast model, incorporating regional statistics. The move is seen as a way of answering critics who have complained regularly that the CITB is unable to predict when skills are going to be in short supply.

CITB's forecasts predict future years' training requirements by calculating the recruitment needs of the industry, which in-turn comes from predictions of the total labour demand minus the total labour supply available in construction.

The national model is based on a 'top-down' approach: total construction output, together with the price of capital (interest rate) and the price of labour (wage rate) are used to forecast total construction employment.

The CITB claims this type of approach provides a sound forecast at the national level based on true past relationships.

The model has been extended to include equations for all standard planning regions in Great Britain.

This creates a robust geographical breakdown on the national forecast on which to base regional training forecasts.