Industry overview
The Construction sector across EU27 average comprises approximately 3,911,034 enterprises employing about 10,775,298 people and generating €2.2 tn in net turnover in 2022. The average enterprise size is 4 employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a healthy operating margin of 11.3% of revenue in 2022, the sector reports €244.1 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
Cost of revenue dominates the Construction P&L at 70.9% of turnover, reflecting the high material and input content of activities in this sector. Personnel costs account for 19.9%, with energy purchases adding 1.1%. Procurement efficiency and contract management are therefore the two strongest profit levers for operators in this segment.
Productivity & human capital
Each employee in the Construction sector generates approximately €155,000 of net turnover against a labour cost of €23,000, yielding a productivity-to-cost ratio of 6.7. Value added per employee stands at €62,000 This is a headline figure to compare against individual firm performance when judging whether headcount is creating proportional value.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2011 to 2022 the operating margin moved from 9.7% to 11.3% (+1.7 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.