Faltering demand and less liquid financial markets helped to make April's survey response the weakest since the last big construction industry recession back in 1992. Work was much harder to come by and many respondents reported a contraction in their activity level during the month. Order books are holding up well so far, but with enquiries sharply down, how long this can be maintained remains to be seen. Redundancies are being reported on a weekly basis and so it isn't surprising that the employment index fell to its lowest since January 1996. After 13 years of continuous growth, in which real industry output rose 32%, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of a golden era. Civil engineering continued to be the most affected sector but the residential and non-residential sectors deteriorated noticeably. All three sectoral activity indices stood below 50 in April, suggesting an across the board contraction. Civil engineering's orders index fell to 40 and its tender enquiries index was even weaker, at 38. Although responses from civils firms were by far the least optimistic, residential companies also reported a drop in enquiries. Residential and non-residential orders, however, continued to hold up. The residential activity index rose two points to 45 and the non-residential activity index declined eight points to 44. Firms in all three sectors said they intended to scale back their employment levels in the next three months.
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