What happened

Glenigan's latest construction index, reported by Construction News this week, shows the scale of the slowdown still running through the sector. In the three months to the end of August, the value of underlying construction starts (projects under £100m) fell 20% compared with the same period last year, even though the quarter-on-quarter drop was a more modest 2%.

Housing took the heaviest hit. Residential starts fell 36% year on year and 15% against the previous quarter, the clearest sign yet that the housing slump has not turned a corner. Regionally, the South East fared worst, down 43% on the year and 29% on the quarter, with the West Midlands close behind at 41% down on the year and 18% down on the quarter.

Glenigan's Allan Willen summed up the mood: the sector remains "stuck in neutral", though he pointed out that the sharp freefall which began in the second quarter has at least "ground to a halt" rather than getting worse. The one part of the market moving in the right direction was non-residential work, up 6% quarter on quarter and 1% year on year, a sign that offices, industrial and public sector projects are doing more of the heavy lifting than housing right now.

Why it matters

Starts data is a leading indicator. A scheme that isn't starting on site this month is a site team, a QS and a raft of subcontract packages that won't be needed for another six to twelve months. When starts fall 20% nationally, and over 40% in two of the country's biggest regional markets, that isn't background noise, it's the pipeline that hiring decisions get made against. Contractors don't recruit ahead of workload they can't see, and right now a lot of workload in housing, and in the South East and West Midlands, simply isn't there yet.

The flip side is that non-residential is holding up better than the headline number suggests, and that split matters more than the average. A national "down 20%" figure hides a market where some sectors and regions are quietly fine and others are genuinely struggling.

What it means for your career

If you're a QS, site manager or project lead working housing-led schemes in the South East or West Midlands, this is the data behind why the phone hasn't been ringing as much this year. It's worth widening your search to non-residential work (offices, industrial, public sector and health) where activity is still growing, even modestly. Contractors and consultancies with a mixed pipeline across sectors are the ones best placed to keep hiring through a slow patch, so when you're weighing offers, ask about the split between residential and non-residential order books, not just the headline turnover figure. And if you're commercial or design team staff currently exposed to a single-sector, single-region housebuilder pipeline, this is a reasonable moment to have that conversation about diversifying your CV's sector exposure before, not after, the next round of resourcing decisions.