Industry groups estimate Australia will need around 116,700 additional construction workers to meet the government’s target of building 1.2 million new homes over five years.
So how did we get here and what are the factors driving the tradie shortage?
I’m an electrician
One of the big problems is youth apprentice wages
They should be eliminated. They do the same work, they should get the same pay as anyone else, and they’re the reason kids pull out of apprenticeships
With residential, and to a lesser extent commercial, kids are treated like shit and used as cheap labour
Young people with brains are still pushed towards university, and even now, the trades still tend to get the leftovers when it comes to young people.
That’s why many big outfits tend to employ slightly older people, many who have tertiary education already. They are there because they are motivated, not because there’s nothing else
But there are only so many of those big employers
It’s also cheaper for unscrupulous companies to hire cheap labour to do the vast majority of the work and have a single tradesperson to sign it off, and plenty of good sparkies won’t be held liable for work that isn’t their own, and rightly so
Thank you for sharing your insights from inside the trades situation. Seems to me there’s a lot of work to be done to clear up the murky parts.
There isn’t one simple answer because it’s a situation that’s more complex than people realise
I think you’re right and it’s been like that for a long time yet look where we are. We need building trades more than ever and we’re still dealing with what sounds like the same problems.
I’ve seen it for three decades now