Who are they?
Construction workers are among the occupations strategically important for the green transition. 3 out of 4 of them are employed in the Construction sector, the pillar of the Renovation Wave. The sector accounts for more than 35 per cent of the EU’s total waste generation, while greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from material extraction, manufacturing of construction products, and construction and renovation of buildings are estimated to account for 5-12 per cent of total national GHG emissions. Trends and challenges in the construction sector profoundly influence construction workers’ skills.
Figure 1: Detailed construction workers’ occupations 
Source: European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations classification (ESCO)
More than a half of construction workers are employed as building frame workers constructing or repairing buildings, foundations, walls, and structures of various materials, such as brick, stone, or concrete. Building finishers, representing a third of construction workers’ jobs, cover, apply or install, maintain, and repair roofs, floors, walls, insulation systems, glass in windows or other frames, as well as plumbing, piping and electrical systems in buildings and other structures. Finally, slightly over one tenth of construction workers are painters, building structure cleaners and related trades workers.
Construction workers accounted for almost 4 per cent (8 million workers) of employment across the EU in 2023. Compared to 2011, this was a slight decrease, and Cedefop Skills forecast only foresees a small change in employment until 2035. However, internal dynamics of skills and jobs demand for these workers will be significant.
Figure 2: Key employment data for construction workers (in thousands) 
Source: European Labour Force Survey and Cedefop Skills Forecast database. Cedefop calculations.
Over time, the share of construction workers employed directly in construction companies is declining, from some 75 per cent in 2011, to estimated 64 per cent in 2035. Construction workers’ jobs share in other sectors – mainly manufacturing, and then in a couple of service sectors, including real estate activities – has never been significant, but is constantly rising over time.
Figure 3: Forecast employment change of construction workers by sectors (2021-2035, in thousands) 
Source: Cedefop Skills Forecast database. Own calculations.
In terms of job creation and destruction, these two developments almost cancel each other out. In reality, what we are most likely observing, is a separation of building maintenance services from construction companies’ portfolio. Building maintenance is either being secured by specialised services companies, or “insourced” by large building owners, such as manufacturing or real estate companies.
Changing requirements for the greening of construction and building renovation, driven by EGD linked initiatives (e.g. the New European Bauhaus and the Renovation wave) directly affect job and skills demand for this occupation group.
While many of the jobs significantly influenced by the greening of construction are in different occupations (electricians, engineering technicians, architects and home designers, and similar), changing standards and processes will influence construction workers a lot – from use of different or improved materials for building frame construction, to ever increasing importance of insulation and house cooling systems, to innovative approaches to painting and cleaning of building structures.
Construction workers' occupations key for the green transition
Some of the detailed occupations included in this occupational group will play a key role in the making European economies and societies greener. Specific tasks and skills are presented below.
Building frame workers
These roles include house builders, bricklayers, stonemasons, concrete placers, or carpenters. Regarding the green transition, their tasks are mainly related to the adoption and effective use of new methods and materials and technologies for better insulation and heating, but also to the proper treatment and separation of waste. This is in particular true for the demolition workers: in demolition activities the importance of the proper treatment of many dangerous substances and materials, as well as the separation of waste for possible reuse can significantly contribute to the lessening of environmental impacts. 
Building finishers
These roles include roofers, floor layers, plasterers, insulation workers, but also glaziers, plumbers and air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanics. While the work of building frame workers is mostly about proper materials use, building finishers deal a lot with the installation of green technology, be it solar panels for roofers, cooling and heating systems for plumbers and pipe fitters, or air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics. In addition, insulation workers are crucial in achieving low-energy or passive certifications for house energy consumption.
Painters and building structure cleaners
Regarding the green transition, the tasks of painters and building structure cleaners include the proper use and treatment of dangerous substances, such as paint or cleaning chemicals.
Employment and skill trends
Employment
The employment trends of construction workers in the past decade reflect the uneasy sailing of the whole construction sector. Their employment was decreasing until 2014, as the sector was recovering particularly slowly after the 2008 financial crisis. A slow and steady recovery between 2014 and 2019 was disturbed by the Covid-19 impact, but a fast recovery followed.
The number of construction workers in the EU-27 in 2022 reached its highest point in a decade. After a sharp decline in 2020, when the hardest hit of the Covid-19 pandemic led to a loss of more than 400 thousand jobs, the sector recovered, leading to over half a million new jobs for construction workers in just two years.
Figure 4: Employment share of construction workers (2022)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Own calculations.
There are no significant employment patterns of construction workers across Europe; however, it looks like the eastern and southern European countries tend to employ more of them, possibly because in these countries, construction – either of buildings or infrastructure – is more intensive, and substantially supported through EU development funds.
The prospects for the construction sector, and its backbone of construction workers, seem good, but turbulent times are not over: shortages of building materials and their high prices further threaten construction investments and jobs.
When comparing past and forecasted employment trends for construction workers, some countries stand out. Ireland, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, and Lithuania were among those with strong employment growth in the past decade while expected to create many new construction workers’ jobs in the future. Greece, Portugal, Denmark, and Hungary have the least optimistic employment prospects for this occupation.
Figure 5: Past and future employment trends of construction workers
Source: Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey, table code LFSA_EGAI2D__custom_7274321, and Cedefop Skills forecast. Own calculations.
Note: Significant growth
Countries labelled with * indicate low sample size and thus lower data reliability.
The green transition is expected to significantly affect the construction sector, especially in relation to the Renovation Wave activities. Exploring the potential impact of the European Green Deal on employment and skills in the EU highlights that construction workers could have the largest positive impact in absolute terms and the second-largest impact in percentage terms on employment by occupation (compared against a baseline employment scenario) (Cedefop 2021).
Similar were the results for construction workers of an ILO analysis (ILO 2019) particularly regarding the impact on global employment of the transition to a sustainable (decarbonised) energy system. Global employment in this occupation by 2030 was estimated at about 4 million jobs higher than the baseline employment scenario. An important message for VET and skills policies concerns that the majority of the expected new construction workers’ jobs could not be filled by laid-off workers from other similar occupations in the same country or region, as the skills required are too different. If these new jobs are to fulfil a role in reducing unemployment, laid-off workers from other occupations will need up- or re-skilling.
The importance of VET was stressed under the second scenario (developed to investigate the global impact on employment of the transition to a more circular economy) run by the ILO: globally, around 3 million new construction workers’ jobs could be filled by laid-off workers with little retraining by 2030; however, about 5 million jobs in this occupation group are estimated to be lost. Of these, just under half are estimated to be “not re-allocatable”, suggesting that many laid-off workers from similar occupations will need re- or up-skilling.
Employment trends will also be positively affected by technological advancements and changes in production methods, although construction workers face a high risk of automation. For example, the shift to off-site construction will create jobs for painters, among others. Modular offsite construction will require skills relevant to efficient collaboration rather than completely new technical skills (ECSO, 2020).
Skill needs and challenges
The European Construction Sector Observatory (ECSO 2020) highlights a number of structural challenges affecting skill development and mismatches in the construction sector, including: a decrease in the number of young skilled workers in the sector; the ageing of the Construction sector’s workforce; the loss of high-skilled workers from countries with lower wages to those with higher wages, and a misalignment between VET and the demand for skills in the sector. The lack of a skilled workforce is reportedly another significant factor holding back the speed and breadth of digitalisation of the sector.
On top of these challenges, the two key drivers of change in terms of employment and skills in the construction industry and for construction workers are advances in technology, including automation, and the need to construct greener buildings/infrastructure and make the existing building stock/infrastructure greener (both in terms of use of materials and in terms of energy use and emissions), as is included in the aims of the EGD. Digitalisation and automation will result in many benefits for the sector, in terms of productivity, sustainability/circularity of processes and materials used, as well as workers’ safety. Nonetheless, construction workers face a significant risk of automation among trades workers, since robots and other technologies minimise the need for physical human presence on the construction site (ECSO, 2021). Also, most construction companies are SMEs (and 94% of those are micro-enterprises), which face the usual challenges regarding training provision (limited human and financial resources, lack of awareness regarding, for example, the importance and use of digital technologies etc.) (ECSO, 2021).
In terms of meeting the requirements of the EGD, there are many areas and ways in which the skills and knowledge required for the occupations in this group will need to be transformed or upgraded, many of which can make use of technological advancements. For example, building erectors will increasingly need to learn how to install pre-fabricated building systems (e.g. structural insulated panels (SIPs)) that have been manufactured off site; heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) installers will need to understand and apply the technology to install energy-efficient appliances and systems; roofing installers will need to learn how to install better-insulated roofs, and green roofs; on-site Construction workers may need to learn how to collect and record information (e.g. building ventilation and airtightness metrics) required for building information modelling (BIM), and; plasterers, painters and decorators will need to learn how to use more-environmentally-sustainable products, which may require specialist application methods.
The drivers of change are likely to affect demand for skills in the different sub-sectors of the construction sector (housing, civil and specialised building) in different ways. For example, the EGD objectives drive the demand for renewable energy and probably also nuclear energy; this can augment the demand for construction workers with the skills necessary to build, say, nuclear power plants, in the specialised building sector. The increased use of prefabricated building systems such as structural insulated panels (SIPs) will require some new skills for construction workers, particularly in the housing industry; but it could also reduce demand for on-site workers, while boosting demand for workers in manufacturing. At the local level, as cities move to become smart(er) and green(er) (Cedefop, 2022) construction activities such as the installation of sensors to monitor and capture data on traffic flows, ensuring that buildings comply with a range of green principles will become more important.
Implementing the EGD goals may not lead to the emergence of many new occupations in the construction workers occupational group; but new skills or adapting existing skills to meet the requirements for greening the building stock will concern several occupations in the group, generally at the medium skill level, such as carpenters, plumbers, roofers, painters, and plasterers (ILO 2019).