2012 Games Employ 40,000 Construction Workers

Ten percent of the 40,000 construction workers employed for the 2012 Olympic Games in London were previously out of work, according to a report by the Olympic Development Authority (ODA).

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A detailed view of the prototype design of the new golden Olympic torch during its unveiling at St Pancras Station on June 8, 2011 in London, England. 8,000 torchbearers will carry the Olympic Flame around the UK during the 70-day relay, which starts at Land's End in Cornwall on May 19, 2012.

The ODA—the body charged with venue construction for the Olympics—said that between April 2008 and June 2011, 25,864 people were employed for five or more days in building the Olympic Park while, 13,749 people worked on the athletes’ village.

Ten percent of workers on both sites said they were unemployed prior to starting work on the Olympic venues.

Around two-thirds of workers at the athletes’ village site were Londoners, while at the Olympic Park there was a roughly equal split between Londoners and non-Londoners. Very few workers overall were from outside the UK.

Residents of one of the five London ‘Host Boroughs’ — those providing facilities for the Games — received priority access to jobs. Several of these boroughs (Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham and Waltham Forest) suffer higher than average unemployment and poverty.

Almost one-quarter of those employed at the Olympic Park were from a host borough, compared with 15.6 percent at the athletes’ village.