Australia's commercial building activities are declining in favour of state-funded public projects, according to a survey.

A recent Master Builders survey found 41 per cent of commercial contractors expect commercial building work to decrease over the next six months, with only 10 per cent seeing growth.

Master Builders Deputy Executive Director Radley de Silva said these results highlighted builders' concerns about the lack of pipeline work flowing through to the commercial building sector.

In the survey, about 37 per cent of commercial builders said the majority of their future building activity would be sourced from residential building projects.

Thirty per cent expected public building projects to form the bulk of their workload, while 20 per cent said that hospitals and healthcare-related infrastructure will feature heavily on their work books over the next six months.

"These trends are not surprising, given the rapid growth of Melbourne's population in recent years and the stimulus-related public sector investment in schools, aged care facilities and hospitals," said Mr de Silva.

According to him, 53 per cent of respondents estimated that between 46 and 100 per cent of their work over the next six months would be government funded.

"These figures illustrate a worrying trend for the commercial construction industry. A commercial building activity outlook dominated by public works is simply not sustainable over the long term.

"Victorian builders require private sector demand to return to pre-GFC levels to ensure that our economic recovery is both balanced and self perpetuating," Mr de Silva said.