Gen Z employees are trading the traditional summer job for roles in construction, new data shows.

In spite of the well-established trend of retail employment growth spiking in the warmer seasons, Employment Hero’s UK Employment Index, which draws on payroll data from 158,000 employees across 4,700 UK small and medium-sized businesses, suggests things may have flipped on their head.

Figures show that Gen Z employment across construction and trade SMEs rose 11.33% quarter on quarter into August, almost three times the rate of retail, hospitality and tourism, which grew just 3.87% over the same period.

Construction Jobs Lead Gen Z Employment Growth

But the construction sector’s lead wasn’t just over retail. Across the board, trade roles came out on top of the eight sectors tracked in the Employment Index, and by some distance. Manufacturing, transport and logistics came second among the eight sectors Employment Hero tracks, up 6.9% quarter on quarter, followed by science and technology at 2.9%, healthcare and community services at 2.55%, education and training at 2.31%, accounting, HR and legal at 1.14%, and sales, marketing and media at 1.1%.

Employment Hero has recorded similar gains in construction before: in February, data showed young people were already choosing trades over traditional degree routes. Department for Education July figures on apprenticeships point towards that rise in popularity. apprenticeship starts in construction, planning and the built environment rose 5.0% to 23,900 in the first three quarters of the 2025/26 academic year, part of an 8.7% rise in apprenticeship starts overall.

Construction Hiring Has Accelerated Since Early 2026

In the year that Employment Hero has been tracking Gen Z’s move into construction, the trend has fluctuated somewhat. Quarterly growth peaked at 7.4% last September, then dropped sharply to just 1.3% by March, the weakest reading in the whole period. By June, growth had rebounded to 14.8%, its highest point on record, before settling at 11.33% in August, the figure now driving this summer’s hiring boom.

Construction’s Gen Z headcount, meanwhile, has grown consistently since the start of the year, from 2.2% in January to 4.2% in March, never once falling into decline. That steady monthly climb helps explain the quarter’s sharper swings: a sector that was consistently adding young workers throughout the year had the momentum to accelerate once summer hiring began.

The obvious explanation for a summer spike would be seasonal or project-based labour rather than genuine career moves. But the data doesn’t support that. In fact, when it came to full-time employment growth, construction ranked second among all sectors, with manufacturing taking the lead.

A Bright Spot Against a Difficult Youth Labour Market

Construction’s pull on young workers is emerging against a difficult backdrop for the wider youth labour market. Almost a million young people aged 16-24 were not in education, employment or training (NEET) between April and June this year, a rate of 13.0%, according to the ONS, while separate analysis from the House of Commons Library put the youth unemployment rate at 16.2% over the same period. 

Set against those figures, construction’s hiring pattern looks less like a one-off summer trend and more like a live counter-example: a sector absorbing young workers at scale while youth unemployment nationally sits at its highest rate in more than a decade. Employment Hero’s February data already showed apprenticeships and trade routes gaining ground on degrees and this summer’s figures suggest that shift has continued to build. 

The industry has room to keep absorbing employees, too. The Construction Industry Training Board’s Workforce Outlook, published in June, said the sector needs 41,200 extra workers a year to meet demand through 2030, with around 45% of that growth expected to come from skilled trades. 

For small businesses already grappling with a skills shortage, and with the sector’s most experienced tradespeople approaching retirement, the data points to something more durable than a summer of holiday work: a generation building careers in an industry that badly needs them.