SWEDEN - It is a fact that European construction markets have had a lot of challenges leading up to the COVID -19 crisis with stagnation trends in many countries.

Not surprisingly, the ongoing crisis will have a huge negative impact on the markets in all the Euroconstruct countries this year. However, as the national experts of Euroconstruct foresee, positive growth rates will be seen already next year and a normalization in 2022.

Compared to 2019 levels, the market, despite the expected upturn and normalization in 2022, will loose around € 350 billion euro in total construction output from 2020 to 2022.

According to the new Euroconstruct forecast, the number of unemployed persons within the Euroconstruct (EC-19) area will increase by 5 million persons this year compared to 2019.

The forecast for 2020 has been revised downwards because of COVID-19 with more than 12 percentage points, indicating a decline of 11.5 percent. This drop in construction is in similar size to the drop caused by the global financial crisis in 2009.

The total construction output is expected to reach about € 1,500 billion which is corresponding to the level of 2015, hence, losing several years of growth. All, but a few, countries included in EC-19 are seeing a decline in 2020, where the UK and Ireland are predicting to have the largest drop around 33 and 38 percent, respectively.