The construction sector in the Canary Islands is the one with the greatest difficulties in finding qualified personnel adapted to the needs of companies in the Canary Islands, according to the conclusions of the Sectoral Construction Bulletin of the end of 2024, prepared by the Chamber of Commerce of Tenerife.
According to the report, nearly 70% of companies in this branch of activity say that the lack of qualified professionals hinders the good performance of the sector and its potential in the archipelago.
The president of the institution, Santiago Sesé, pointed out: "We believe that Dual Vocational Training, continuous training and professional certificates are tools that could help direct more human capital towards construction."
Despite the obstacles, construction continued to strongly drive employment and economic activity in the last stretch of last year, as indicated by the results achieved by companies in the sector, 20% of which stated that they had improved their activity compared to the summer months and 67% stated that they had maintained it stable.
A behavior of the activity that, added to good forecasts for the start of the year 2025, where 85% of companies stated that they will continue to improve or maintain their results, allowed the business confidence of the sector to grow by 3.8%, the highest percentage of all productive sectors.
More than 1,300 people left the unemployment lists in the last year
In terms of employment, the improvement can be seen in the behavior of Social Security affiliations and in the number of registered unemployed, which closed the year with 59,700 employed and 14,101 unemployed, which meant an annual employment growth of 1.5% with 886 more employed than at the end of 2023 and a reduction in unemployment of 1,329 people (-8.6%). A positive evolution that will be maintained in the short term, since 82.9% of companies expect to maintain their staff in the first three months of 2025 and 4% believe they can increase them.
Other indicators such as the sale of cement, with an annual advance of 3% during the last three months of the year, also show the increase in activity in the last stretch of 2024 which, in the private sector, is observed in the certifications of completion of work whose annual growth in the fourth quarter was 115%, as well as its liquidation value with an increase of 78% for the same period.
From the public side, the bidding continues to be dynamic, but in the section of buildability, since in the total of the year 2024 the growth of the budgets of the contracts of the different Public Administrations tendered was 1.9%, motivated exclusively by the upward variations in the section of building (4.5%), since civil works decreased by 0.7% in the year.