Microgen can soften job loss blow
Between 67,000 and 154,000 jobs will be lost across the building services engineering industry in 2009, according to the sector skills council SummitSkills.
Research carried out among consulting engineering practices showed that many expect work to be cancelled - or delayed - later in the year leading to an inevitable downsizing of their workforces. They were particularly pessimistic about the private housing market, but also gloomy about prospects in most market areas including public works.
SummitSkills believes companies will be forced to make redundancies and as many as two fifths of heating and ventilating engineers employed in 2008 could be out of work by the end of 2009.
However, it believes the industry can take action to soften the blow by redeploying workers in growth areas like the microgeneration market. The sustainability agenda offers solid job prospects for trained engineers and more clients are looking for ways to achieve 'zero carbon' targets.
According to SummitSkills, this should allow employers to maintain the training of some redundant apprentices or at least look to share apprentices with other employers to allow them to complete their training, so there is a workforce in place ready for the market upswing.
It has pledged to support employers in developing the skills of existing workers in new market areas "by encouraging course provision and funding availability".