The sector employs very few women. In recent years, only 4% of the recruited staff were female. A large proportion of the female employment is made up of part time non-manual labour in small firms and includes the wives of sole proprietors, who act as administrators. In a BPEC survey almost no female employees could be found within the plumbing sector.

Source: ESTTL 2002a and ESTTL 2002b

Source: ESTTL 2002b, figure 8.2

In this sector, there are very few employees with disabilities. Certain physical disabilities rule out employment. For instance, colour blindness prevents entry to the electrotechnical, plumbing, and mechanical engineering service industries.

Source: JTL website 2004

There is very little data available on ethnicity in the sector. Like the whole construction industry, the industry has a poor record in recruiting and retaining people from ethnic minorities. For further information see Construction - ethnicity.

There is some evidence that:

• less than 2% of all plumbers employ any staff from non-white background
• ethnic minorities comprise only 1.4% of the workforce within the plumbing sector
• the average proportion of non-European employees in the heating and ventilation sector is on average about 3.6%
• the highest proportion of non-European employees (10%) is in Yorkshire and Humberside

Source: BPEC 2000c and ESTTL 2002b

The age structure of the plumbing sector is relatively skewed with the vast majority of plumbers between the ages of 35 and 59. Only a small number of plumbers are older than 60 years. Approximately 22% of plumbers are in between 25 and 34 years old and about 10% fall in the age group of 19 to 24 years olds.

Source: BPEC 2000b

Source: BPEC 2000b