Job volume dropped by 15 percent from March to April, but a few trades grew, mostly in residential maintenance.
To make the lockdown easier to bear for residents, air-conditioning and heating, electrical services and painting jobs were some of those to see in increase in April.
ServiceSeeking.com.au crunched the numbers on its top 20 categories in April versus March to determine the way things were going for each field. Here are the results:
- air-conditioning and heating jobs went up 152.38 percent
- paving jobs up 99.51 percent
- asbestos removal up 87.12 percent
- rubbish removal up 67.85 percent
- fencing repair up 62.46 percent
- electrical services up 53.83 percent
- roofing up 37.52 percent
- concreting repair up 30.02 percent
- carpentry up 24.61 percent
- house painting up 9.57 percent
- plastering up 9.18 percent
- plumbing up 6.47 percent
- handyman jobs up 2.45 percent
- cleaner jobs down 3.06 percent
- removalists down 10.37 percent
- renovations down 15.55 percent
- pest control down 16.71 percent
- tiling jobs down 22.39 percent
- gardening down 26.81 percent, and
- flooring down 58.09 percent.
"We saw a dramatic fall in large renovation jobs month on month, down more than 15 percent," says Jeremy Levitt, co-founder of ServiceSeeking.com.au, "which we think may precede a fall in property prices.
"Property owners typically pull back on renovating when their confidence falls. However, we saw the COVID-19 'nesting' phenomenon in full effect, with locked down homeowners and renters increasing their spend on property maintenance categories."
ServiceSeeking.com.au is a find a tradie directory.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash