Construction

In the year 2004, the construction recorded a growth, different in the individual quarters of the year. The construction output increased 9.7% year-on-year in real terms, most since 1993 (+16.1% in Q1, +16.5% in Q2, +4.5% only in Q3, and +5.0% on Q4).

The growth of construction output was affected by:

- the concentration of work on large civil engineering and building constructions of (by-passes of large towns, railway corridors, Metro and a tram line in Prague, trade and cultural centres);
- the development and implementation of other significant developers’ construction projects, especially of foreign investors; and
- the development of housing construction considerably fostered by the expansion of mortgage-credit and saving-in-building-society markets and by the development of interest rates. The number of granted mortgage credits increased by 30% compared to the year 2003 and the contractual principal increased by 43%.

Construction work carried out in the year 2004 was worth CZK 394 505 million. The construction output of small enterprises (under 20 employees) amounted to roughly a third of the total volume of construction work (estimated by the CZSO). The key enterprise base of the construction embraced 2 404 enterprises with 20+ employees and these carried out construction work worth CZK 278 207 million – an increase of 8.9% CZK 278 207 million year-on-year.

Seen from the angle of the size structure of enterprises, the largest increase in the construction work occurred in enterprises with 20-49 employees (+12.1%), followed by enterprises with 100-249 employees (+11.5%) and enterprises with 500+ employees (+9.0%).

Labour productivity

Labour productivity in small enterprises, measured by the volume of construction work per employee, increased by 5.3% year-on-year. The greatest rise in labour productivity was observed in enterprises employing 200-249 people (+18.3%), while the lowest (+4.3%) in enterprises with 100-199 employees. Enterprises with 50-99 employees were the only that recorded a decrease (-0.6%).

Employment

Total employment in the construction increased in Q4 2004 by 2.9% (as established by the LFSS). The number of employees rose, too, but the number of the self-employed fell down slightly. Of the 2.9%, the employment in construction enterprises with 20+ employees increased by 3.4%. Over the year 2004, the number of employees went up to 158 thousand, of which manual workers involved in construction work accounted for 104 thousand. Broken down by region of the enterprise’s head office, the number of employees increased in the CR’s all regions, but most in the Plzeňský and Jihočeský Regions (+8.9% and 7.4%, respectively) and least in Prague (+1.7%) and the Vysočina Region (1.8%).

Wages

In the year 2004, the average monthly wage of employees in construction enterprises with 20+ employed people grew to CZK 18 125 (+6.2%) and that of manual workers in the construction to 14 842 (+5.6%). Its highest rises occurred in the Liberecký Region (+7.3%) and Prague and the Ústecký Region (+6.8% each), while the lowest were observed in the Moravskoslezký, Pardubický and Vysočina Regions (+5.0%, +5.8% and 5.9%, respectively).

The number of enterprises with 20+ employees includes active enterprises only. The monthly data for the 4rd quarter were updated, also by means of final price deflators.