Housing crisis: 100,000 workers to lose jobs

More than 100,000 builders will lose their jobs on housing sites this year as new work grinds to a standstill.

Site workers are fleeing the sector in their thousands and looking for starts in other areas where the slowdown is not so severe.

Roger Humber, strategic policy advisor at the House Builders Association, said every home scrapped represented a builder losing his job.

Industry statistics show around 180,000 homes were built in 2007, but experts predict that will fall to 80,000 homes this year. Humber said the fall would mean the loss of 100,000 site jobs. These will add to the recent swathe of strategic and administrative jobs cut at housebuilders' regional and head offices.

Humber said: "Used broadly we have always said one house equals one job, in that all the components - like the plumber doing half a day and the electrician - add up to one person per house. This year we have about 80,000 homes coming in rather than 180,000 last year, so that is 100,000 jobs lost. It is the crudest rule of thumb we can apply."

Analysts have always struggled to keep track of the number of industry-wide redundancies because of the difficulty separating job losses at offices from out-of-work contractors not directly employed by housebuilders.

Humber said the housing crash was destroying the industry's talent base with important professionals being shown the door along with administrative office staff. He said: "Whole land teams are being laid off because no one is buying land - it is not just affecting the paper pushers and bean counters."

Federation of Master Builder's director of external affairs Brian Berry said builders performing renovation work were also losing work, with members reporting a 40% decrease in inquiries between January and March this year.