Housebuilding squeeze 'bad news for self-employed builders'

Construction firm job cuts are bad news for self-employed builders, an industry expert has said.

Today, Barratt Developments became the latest major company to announce more than a thousand job cuts, and the House Builders Association has warned that more than 100,000 people could lose their jobs this year as the housing market struggles.

Delivery of new homes fell from 180,000 in 2007 to around 80,000 this year, affecting the Government's target to build 3 million houses by 2020.

"The housebuilding sector has been one of the first to suffer the fallout from the credit crunch and that's extremely bad news for contractors and self-employed builders," Neil Gerrard from construction news provider Contract Journal told More Than Business news.

While Gerrard noted that many of the redundancies have been made in office-based sectors, he warned that builders could also be affected.

"It is likely that many more contractors and tradesmen will lose out because the construction labour market is so casualised," he said.

The squeeze could see builders competing for work at reduced labour rates, Contract Journal reported.

"It's difficult to predict precisely how many, but it is estimated that there are now five bricklayers chasing every job available," Gerrard added. "The traditional measure in the industry is that one house represents one job."