And there's not many who want to do it

TRADITIONAL skilled manual trades are facing a manpower crisis in the North-west because the region's school leavers do not want to get their hands dirty, according to research conducted by ICI Dulux Trade.

The research -- called the ICI Dulux Trade Craftsman Report -- reveals the painting and decorating industry is at greatest risk from the lack of new young talent.

Dulux Trade, the leading supplier of paint and coatings in the UK, questioned 1,000 school-leavers about their career aspirations and discovered skilled manual trades were highly unappealing to the younger generation of males.

It found less than six per cent of teenagers were considering becoming decorators, bricklayers, electricians, joiners or plumbers.

Their preferred professions included computer programming (19 per cent), office-based jobs (18 per cent), law (17 per cent), teaching (16 per cent) and journalism (10 per cent).

Computer programming and other IT work particularly appealed to male school leavers, while teaching was the top preferred job for girls (18 per cent).

Of all the manual trades, decorating was the least popular.

The majority of North-west respondents had not even considered decorating, while more than a third thought it sounded boring, 20 per cent believe that it does not offer enough money and 12 per cent think that it sounds too much like hard work.

Experts within Dulux Trade estimate that decorating firms in the area will

be hiring qualified staff from abroad by 2020 because so few youngsters are taking it up as a career and most of today's decorators would then be retired.