A report commissioned by the national industry body found the sector would produce construction worth $79.2 billion this year, up from the record $75.5 billion in 2019.
But research agency, The Insight Centre, found that an extra 150,000 construction workers would be needed across the next 15 years to meet the demand of an industry which has a huge role to play delivering the homes required to curb the housing crisis.
The construction industry is key to fixing the housing crisis but it has many of its own problems. (Dan Himbrechts/AAP PHOTOS)
High redundancy rates, skills shortages and large mental health-related absenteeism would need to be tackled to build the required workforce, the report called Capitalising on the Next Construction Boom revealed.
Incolink, the industry's redundancy fund, said there were "major roadblocks" stopping NSW from capitalising on the benefits of the forecast boom.
"NSW is about to experience perhaps the single biggest construction industry boom in a generation," CEO Erik Locke said.
"This is a huge growth sector but it also has the highest proportion of workers who have lost a job in the past 12 months as a result of redundancy.
"Getting better support to these workers to address the financial and wellbeing challenges should be a major priority to keep workers in the sector."
With 300,000 workers currently in construction, the report said 450,000 would be needed in the next 15 years.
By 2040, the total value of work is set to soar to a massive $114 billion before inflation.
The forecast short-term growth is largely attributed to home-building, as the NSW government works to hit nationally agreed housing targets.
NSW needs to build 377,000 extra properties in the next five years as part of the National Housing Accord which would deliver 1.2 million nationwide
The Master Builders Association's pre-budget submission said Australia's wider building and construction sector would need 500,000 workers to simply maintain business as usual, with even more required to hit the housing targets.
In NSW, The Insight Centre found mental health was stopping construction employees from working about half a day out of every 20 days.
Redundancies also shape as a major challenge, with 56,000 workers losing their jobs to redundancy in 2019, the last year of data not affected by COVID-19.
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