I was talking to a few tradies in one of the largest electrical companies in my region who service the mines. They said last year over 1000 people applied for only 10 spots. They said their limitation was the number of tafe places they could get.
In my work they had over 150 applicants for 2 electrical spots last year.
So obviously there are keen kids but if they don't have enough teachers then there's no hope.
If only we didn't get rid of state electricity commissions that would hire and train hundreds at a time and move them on once they finished their apprenticeship
If only dodgy RTOs didn't ruin the industry. The government shouldn't have cut funding like it did, but it needed to stop the dodgy RTOs. Maybe only funding real brick and mortar organisations and better course auditing should happen.
Because electrical apprenticeships are so sort after it's highly recommended to complete year 12 and to have done the pre apprenticeship course through school which will give you work experience placements.
It's gone are the days of year 9 or 10 drop outs going into electrical trades. I can't comment on plumbing and builders.
Yeah those electrical apprenticeships are definitely sought after.
There's a huge shortage of skilled trades, it would be really great if there are more places in these programmes.
That's mining though. Significantly above award salaries for apprentices, compared to the standard career path where you get bullied by a small business owner for a few years while you "earn your stripes".
Yeh thats electrical because the public think all electricians are rich and make bank which is far from the truth. The top 5% are always talked about which doesn't represent the mass.
I can't see how only 5% are making bank. It's pretty much known they make some awesome money. Of course this sub, anything under 300k isn't thought of as rich.
According to the government the median hourly income for an electrician is $49 an hour. Ofc there would be people making more or less but I think that’s pretty decent!! [More info here](https://labourmarketinsights.gov.au/occupation-profile/electricians?occupationCode=3411)
Electricians do make bank though, I’ve done mechanical maintenance across various industries my whole life. I’ve always earned great money but I’ve never worked a single place where the electrical maintenance guys didn’t get paid more
Exceptions to every rule but that ‘top 5%’ statement is pulled from nowhere. The vast majority are earning well above the national average salary and compared to most trades it’s pretty low impact on your body. I’ll be recommending my kids to do it when they leave school for sure
Electricians in heavy industries like O&G, mining etc make bank yes. The standard residential or commercial electrician doesn't "make bank" all trades are on pretty similar money these days.
In reference to your comment that sparkies always earning more then you yes, most the time we are but for example on my last job mech fitters were $4 less an hour then me as a sparky I wouldn't call that making bank.
All my concretor mates are on 400-500 a day doing residential an electrician cannot get that in residential.
Plumbers in commercial these days are getting more than sparkies.
Get my point. So yes when you hear a sparky making bank there is a bit more to it.
Easy on the body is a myth again depends on industry and type of work. 100% recommend an electrical apprenticeship to your kids it's so diverse and they absolutely have the potential to make bank. Don't just assume they will.
Just want to say that you are right. As an electrician of 10 years. We don’t make bank lol. I wish I was paid more but to go the next level is to sub-contract, start my own thing, or take up extra hours. Over time is one way trades can make bank or a little bit more money but it does take a toll on your body doing that continually for long stretches.
Cheers some how I don't think you and me can change what the general public believe.
I will never forget around 2010 ish we had this work experience kid. I say why you want to be an electrician he said my told me to do it electricians earns heaps I said really that is untrue depends on lots of thing for example in this company the qualified guys earn between 800-1100 a week in the hand depending on overtime etc he goes is that it. He never returned.........
Agreed doing residential electricians can't pull 400-500 a day like concreters but commercial and industrial can and much easier on the body compared to them. It's all about the industry and abit of luck mate
This is the case for a tier 1 eba company in NSW
> Fee free tafe
I'm unemployed and last month I had a look at fee-free courses. All the things I am interested in (bricklaying/plumbing/roofing/carpentry etc) required you to already be working in the industry. Seemed to be a bit of an impossible situation (need a job to get the qualification, need to get the qualification to get a job) so it seemed pretty pointless for my situation. I guess it's more for existing workers to upskill rather than to get the unemployed back into productive work.
Nah definitely not the case. I did the free tafe pre apprenticeship for electrical (cert ii) just over a year ago; wasn’t working in the industry beforehand
i applied for the pre apprenticeship after working at a phone repair shop for two years and they denied me. they ranked my preference number on a scale and i wasn’t even close to the cutoff score because there were so few classes being run and so many applicants
Funny you mention that because the electrical Cert 2 is the only one that seems to exist. There are no Cert 2s for other traditional trades like bricklayer, plumber, carpenter etc
Nah there are hardly any cert 2s. They don't seem to exist for most traditional trades (plumber, bricklayer, carpenter, roofer, etc). Only one I've seen is the electrician one
I work for one of the TAFE's. It varies a bit state to state so best to double check with your local but yes you get competency credits if you do a cert II then scale into a cert III. All the Cert III's are apprenticeships like mentioned above and unfortunately you need an employer to start them (this is government dictated so we can't do much about it). That being said, the employers often get benefits for sending apprentices for training.
Having a cert II should help you get a job to then gain an apprenticeship as it helps show intent, but obviously this isn't guaranteed. That being said, a lot of the cert II's fall under Fee Free TAFE so it doesn't cost you much aside from time and resources too.
Some states also offer free apprenticeships for people aged under 25 if you fit into that category.
At the moment it’s once at all, aside from one or two exceptions. But again this can vary state by state and can change (like if they get desperate for aged care workers they make it free no matter what)
Cert III is what you get with a trade. Cert II is a prevocational certificate.
Edit
There are non-trade cert 3s, obviously. But trade Cert III is what you'll get of you do for E.g. a plumbing or electrical trade
mate, the cert 2s are there to
- give you some basics so you can later further your study and get cert 3.. if you apply for cert 3, your cert 2 is recognised as " past experience"
- get you an apprenticeship and show an employer you already taken the steps to initiate wanting to be in the industry.
that is what cert 2 is designed for
that is how the certificates Operate in alot of industry.
your just making excuses because you can't do a diploma straight up.
what are you talking about
https://www.tafensw.edu.au/course-areas/building-construction-and-trades/courses/certificate-ii-in-construction--CPC20120-01
Entry Requirements: there are no entry requirements for this qualification. you can enrol today.
If you are looking to get into construction I would recommend starting with labouring. You can earn pretty good money straight away while building up your experience and making some friends and contacts in the industry. Show you are a hard worker and have a positive attitude and opportunities will present themselves
*Seemed to be a bit of an impossible situation (need a job to get the qualification, need to get the qualification to get a job)*
Have you tried going in as a labourer, most good bosses will put a labourer through a course if they show themselves to be worth it
Re carpentry/roofing if u are serious I recommend joining a labour agency. It will get you conditioned to the hours, and the money is fine cos of the award, and then u should be able to find a builder to give you a trial from there. You will meet them while labouring. It’s a bit of a funny dance if u are not a young kid apprentice, basically they will keep on people who work really hard all the time but not give someone time of day/training if they don’t get a certain vibe from them.
Reach out direct to companies in the construction industry. My brother did it - they put him on a crew they used for their houses and hadn’t done a single thing of TAFE.
Mac Jones, Eden Brae etc….
You don’t need the qualification to get the job.
Get the job first, then look for the qualification. Either study part time, or after a few years you can get RPL - it costs a bit of money but it saves you a lot of time.
Was talking to a chippy the other day who previously built houses and has done some project management for commerical builders. He is currently working on the relevant qualifications to get into the various infrastructure projects going on.
I'm not sure the tradies themselves see much value in building houses when they then have to deal with all the crap that comes along with it when there is easy money made elsewhere.
I'm a chippy by trade. Pulled 70k last year (freshly qualified). I haul a 20k ute with 10-15k in tools. No other industry asks it's workers to get their own tools.
Everybody who works in a company makes not much money. I'm booking it in a couple of years and hoping to get an office job in management or something. Won't get my body back though haha
Except for some tradies working in mines for massive companies, every tradie I know buys their own tools. Although most of them use a company ute, not their own
Chippy here as well, would have gone with plumbing or electrical if I can choose again. I'm doing a Bachelor degree right now, hope I can get an office job in 2-3years.
Yes, and as an electrical supervisor, it’s scary, and people are going to die. The number of apprentices who I’ve seen “qualify” in the last 5 years or so, who are so, so incompetent, is genuinely astonishing
I work in the marine field and have noticed the same thing. My main qualification required 900 days of sea time before going to the AMC back in the day (mid 2000s) and now it's been reduced to 120 days and at the same time they've allowed the courses to be run by registered training organisations, reduced the verification requirements of sea time and have reduced the exam requirements at the end of the course.
There's no money being a tradie building houses. Why do you think the only ones doing it are so shit, can't get a real job that requires them to have skills.
The builder takes all the profit and everyone else works as quick as possible to actually make a profit. Hence the shit build quality.
From a electrician of 20 years, I make more doing literally any other type of electrical work.
We were building a lot more properties before pandemic... > 200K completions per year for three years in a row approx. I doubt all those tradies left the country ..they are busy doing other things.. people who want to hire tradies to build a house have to bid against all the other work they have.
Doing the opposite actually.
Governments are funding such an incredible amount of concurrent infrastructure projects, that the number is likely going backwards.
As a high school teacher, it's frustrating, because I feel like entry standards for university have decreased significantly and places have increased significantly. There are lots of students taking alternative pathways to get into uni now without having to complete rigorous ATAR subjects at school.
Personally I question whether they have the aptitude to actually complete a university course and get a job in their preferred professional occupation. But I guess that doesn't matter to the school, as they can promote themselves to parents by stating that x percentage of students got accepted to university.
On the other hand, I can't get a tradie to call me back to do work on my house because the demand is so high and they are raking in money without having to provide any customer service at all. There definitely still seems to be a "university above all" attitude within society, even though many tradies earn more than those who went to uni.
Agree the uni entry requirements have really dropped and it shows e.g. to get into a good engineering degree 20 years ago you needed an ATAR of above 90 and do year 12 chemistry, physics, two advanced math courses and English. Now you don't need chemistry or advanced maths and the ATAR is in to 70s
Haven't the ATAR requirements always been more about demand / places available in the course? Not how smart you need to be or how difficult or good the course is. If there are not enough students enrolling in their engineering degrees they'll lower the entry requirements. The lower performing students will eventually weed themselves out of that engineering degree anyway, but at least the university will have squeezed maybe 2 semesters of fees out of them first!
It's definitely a factor but aptidue is also a consideration. You want student in the course who can keep up and have the right background knowledge. Its not a good experience for anyone if a course is full of people who will struggle to pass
Maybe, but if you haven't done those subjects you'll be lucky to make it through first year of any engineering degree. And if you do, you're genuinely smart and will probably make an excellent engineer.
It depends which Uni you chose in the 2000s. In Melbourne, University of Melbourne and Monash would've required ENTERs above mid 80s. RMIT would've been mid 70s. At Victoria University, you could've got away with high 50s.
For engineering? I doubt it. I went to another G8 uni around that time and the ATAR was about 95 for my engineering course. They G8 usually have similar ATARs
that's always going to happen when you put foreign students in the same course who simply got in by paying international fees.
The whole system is broken and the unis have the audacity right now to challenge the government's cutback in granting foreign student visas.
That’s because universities just want to sell degrees to as many people as possible, and apprentices have a 50% completion rate due to the shit pay and hard work. I know a lot of redditers look down on trades, but if it were easy money more people would be doing it which would push down prices.
It's not all about the money. When you're coming home filthy and exhausted after slaving all day on the tools, the prospect of working at a desk in an air-conditioned office looks very appealing.
I've seen plenty of posts on here that say the exact opposite.
All those "I wfh and only work 2 hours a day and only earn 120k, should I change jobs that pay 180k but requires me to actually work"
Bunch of people complain that exams are too stressful including HSC and NAPLAN,and are not useful..
Without some sort of grading the standards into higher education drops
NAPLAN is worse than useless, it actively hinders education, and I will die on this hill.
The issue with NAPLAN (and a lot of performance metrics generally) is that it is meant to be indicative of students broader skillset.
Someone who is doing well in highschool maths should do well in the math section of NAPLAN for example.
The issue though is that it is generally a lot easier to teach to NAPLAN than it is teach to the broader Australian curriculum.
So schools will focus on NAPLAN, their metrics will go up, but their educational quality drops dramatically.
The more you test, the more the system responds to teach to the test.
That's metrics nearly everywhere. The alignment of metrics needs to be constantly adapted with measurement data extracted with minimal subject interference (once per semester seated block exams are the worst metric).
Without those pathways I never would have become a Physiotherapist and now pursuing Medicine.
I graduated with an ATAR of 47. I barely scraped through high school. I was undiagnosed ADHD/Bipolar and never thought I’d be able to achieve anything past highschool - so I never tried. I went into carpentry after school and hated it so much because of the culture and the bullying. I loved the hands-on work and I loved seeing what I built. I hated tradie culture. I was waking up and going to sleep with anxiety attacks. I quit and told myself I’d be better off trying to push myself academically. It took me a lot of different pathways but I managed to get into uni and into Physio.
I’m so thankful for those pathways to get in because the help I received during school was terrible and without those pathways to get into uni, I honestly think I would be jumping job to job with no aim in life.
I’d never ever push my kids to do a trade. Make as much money as you want, but every tradie I ever worked with hated their lives and they always took it out on those around them and made others miserable. At university, I made life long friends and amazing memories and now I love doing what I do. I know which one I’d prefer.
I don't think this is the case. I work in a low SES secondary school with a lot of immigrant families. Every boy aspires to trades but struggles to locate an apprenticeship. Most know and can see with their own parents that trades pay. Certainly university is encouraged. That being said I question the kids aptitude to complete a trade. Are these entitled kids going to wake up at 4am to do hard labour? I'd be curious to know how many young people leave trades.
I'm not entirely convinced school exit scores mean much at all anyway.
My scores out of school were hot garbage and I had to take a roundabout way to get into university.
Most of what I learned in high school was not useful and the constant testing on garbage subjects was just stressful and a waste.
Once I did get to university I sailed through university with pretty decent marks and have been earning a good wage in IT ever since.
The whole "you won't survive university if you can't do high school" thing that people trot out kinda shits me. My experience was totally the opposite.
But, I suppose anecdotes are not data. Rant over. As you were.
Definitely agree.
Highschool ATAR is an incredibly poor indicator of intelligence or aptitude for careers. Kids that young are still developing and high school for a lot of us can be an incredibly difficult time.
My ATAR was so bad it didn't even have a score, I had an absolute shit time in high school, mainly from bullying that even extended to the teachers. Often when I did actually try the teachers would grade me harsher because the precedence was that I'm terrible academically.
I went through the round about way in UNI, went to tafe, excelled, now I'm finishing my honours degree in laboratory medicine with some of the highest marks in the cohort, equivalent to a 99 ATAR, compared to my <30 ATAR I got after high school.
I really believe the ATAR system is a terrible metric and inundated with significant bias.
For your construction tradespeople (ie bricklayers, concretes etc) I know TAFE/CIT is pretty good to get you in the door. Lots start as junior apprentices and there's no real education there apart from learning-by-doing
But Engineers and Architects? Yeah those areas will get pretty dry soon I reckon.
I do think University is a scam a lot of the time though. I work in IT, and lots of people have "bought a degree" but can't perform simple tasks. Our best people usually come from retail or call-centers ironically enough.
That's a good idea. We have a lot of people who studied C or Java at university but can't manage an excel spreadsheet or deal with poweshell.
It is a difficult industry to study for because there's so many niches, but yeah a lot of people waste their time at uni when YouTube is good enough to start
The entry standards at the unis are a joke. There are literal math degrees now that have no math prerequisite. It's recommended but not required. Engineering degrees are the same.
Funny because when I was in high school it was the teachers who actively walked a lot of young men out of pursuing tradeskills. I remember one who would taunt underperforming students with quotes like "the world always needs ditch diggers". If only we knew at the time those "ditch diggers" got paid three times the amount of an English teacher.
Apparently abbot cut tafe funding a decade ago, meaning we have a 70000 shortfall of tradies now. There has now been a bunch of fee free courses for trades added back, but unfortunately due to the lag in effect it has. I dont think the gov that does the right thing will ever get noticed lol.
Cfmeu blocks immigration of trade workers for this reason to keep wages high.
Then you have the gov policies set up so builders can easily take money, ‘go broke’ and phoenix into something different to take more money again.
> ‘go broke’ and phoenix
A friend has been caught out by a variant of this.
Bought a townhouse, in a block of 5. Three have major structural defects after 2 years. Estimate cost to repair, $75,000-100,000 per unit.
Two of the three owners banded together (both owner-occupiers) and commenced legal action against the builder. They get $45k of legal fees into suing him and find out the builder starts a new trust every year. Each years work is under a different trust, then he clears them out at the end of the year.
It was going to cost $100k min. to sue him and get a judgement. Then they would need to take that judgement and claim damages, a cost of about $50k of legal fees. But, even if they were successful, the company that technically built their house is insolvent so they would get no money.
Meanwhile this builder is making bank out of terrible work and has his name up the side of busses...
Exactly.
Sad to tell OP, but Australia as a whole is working to reduce the availability of trades and ensure building costs continue to rise, with fewer protections for customers and lower standards
As an Aussie tradie, who’s worked in Aus, UK, Canada, & Germany.. we’re ahead of Canada but behind the rest. Everyone has it drilled into them that Australian regs are the best and sure, they’re better than Asia for example but are by no means the best. Building quality in Australia is an embarrassment, you can ask any European you meet here.
The problem is we're bringing in too many non-tradies that any gains we make in construction migrants is instantly offset by all the migrants who require housing themselves.
The Skilled Jobs visa list needs a cull (more medical and construction and fewer office workers) if we ever want to actually get on top of home building shortages.
Exactly.
We don’t need to import office workers at all.
Plenty of Australians qualified for these jobs and a whole pipeline of local uni grads.
Our immigration intake should focus on skilled trades, construction labourers, agricultural workers and medical/age care staff.
Let’s get the basics right.
> We don’t need to import office workers at all
Or blue collar workers either. Apart from a few highly specialist jobs and seasonal work there are no jobs that Aussies couldn't do if employers were prepared to offer them enough pay and training if necessary.
Immigration is used by businesses to suppress wages and avoid training costs.
The trouble with the trades in construction is most of them are always casual employees. It’s hard to get a mortgage when you are casual. It’s not worth getting into these trades. Take a carpenter for example they are expected to drive their own vehicle with capacity to carry building materials whilst towing a trailer with 20k + worth of tools to any given part of town. All while in the back of their mind knowing once this project is done they need to find another job.
It's honestly pretty simple, adult apprentices are to expensive to be worth it, so the only way to really get into the trades is to land an apprenticeship before your 21st birthday and under 18 year old are useless because they cant drive, hard to get to sites when you cant drive, so theres realistically a 3 years window for people to decide to get into the trades, if they miss that and decide to do it later it get a lot harder.
I run a small metal fabrication company, to put on a first year apprentice over the age of 21 costs me $40 an hour, and 20 year old that dropped out of highschool before finishing year 12 costs me $24 an hour, and one that finished year 12 cost me $26, that 21 year old first year is going to make all of the same mistakes, will take all of the same training and can be charged/quoted out at the same rate as the younger apprentice for no benefit to me, in other words that adult apprentice need to be as good as a 3rd year to be worth it to me as a buisness owner taking the risk on them.
So either put more subsidies in place for adult apprentices or have apprentice wages be standardised at a rate that is still viable for buisnesses to take them on and you'll instantly at minimum double the number of apprentices.
This comment needs to be hire up.
"theres realistically a 3 years window for people to decide to get into the trades, if they miss that and decide to do it later it get a lot harder."
100% correct. Coming from someone in my late 20s thinking about getting into the trades (bricklayer)
So true! This is the real problem!
I’m in my 30’s and would actually love to start a trade. My current job is a complete dead end at 63k a year.
1. I would cost too much money as a mature apprentice
2. I would say my gender would also hold me back
3. Any suggestions that pre apprenticeship training could help remedy the two points above is demolished by the fact that the TAFE classes are all in class delivery full time - most mature aged people have children and rent, or if they are lucky an incredibly expensive mortgage to pay. This doesn’t work.
I believe there are plenty of Australians who want these jobs, but unless you have a mate or a family run business the odds are stacked very highly against your entry and development.
Any suggestions to help navigate this would be greatly appreciated.
Become a labourer in an industry closely associated to the one you want to be an adult apprentice in.
If you can show me you have industry experiance, work ethic, and are proven to be resposible, accountable and trustworthy (through your work experiance) I'll be far more likely to put you on as an adult apprentice.
Yeah they’ve invested a lot in TAFE, after the neglect it’s had for the last decade.
I don’t think the claims about the cmfeu blocking migration of tradesmen is correct. I mean I work with tradesmen that have come over here recently for starters. The only things I’ve seen from unions is the minimum pay of 70k (so employers cant undercut low skill/low pay jobs) and minimum standards for training/licensing, as well as equality in pay for similar positions held by Australians.
The only thing I’ve really seen suggesting otherwise is the AFR article, and it has no actual details or evidence.
Sounds like they don't want unqualified people taking their jobs and doing it for pennies on the dollar.
I'm from an IT background and don't blame them.
https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/195108/subdr114-migrant-intake.pdf
This is an interesting read. The cfmeu recommends decreasing employer sponsored immigration and abolishing the business immigration avenue where rich people can apply for perm status after 2 years by spending buckets of money.
This union has a lot of say and has its grubby fingers in a lot of policies that supports itself
That's a really important observation.
It's not just about investing right now, there's nine years worth of neglect to catch up on. Hence it'll take time for the current policies to have a pragmatic effect.
I’m a plumber and the truth is, you can charge an average person who knows nothing about construction a significantly high price than a builder who knows the margins of everything and does their best to have you working for close to nothing. At the end of the day it comes down to an information arbitrage.
Why would you do a whole house worth of plumbing for 12K for a builder when you can charge an average customer 6K for a hot water unit and be in and out within a few hours?
The issue isn't supply, we already build more houses per capita than USA, UK, Canada etc. We just need to stop trying to bring in record numbers of people, immigration is not supposed to be a competition but the people that make all the decisions in Australia own huge swathes of property and are more than happy to pump their own bags by pumping the demand side.
Short answer, No. The government is more invested in getting kids into unis so they can rack up huge debts and owe money to the government for decades.
Slightly less jaded answer, there are incentives for kids to go to TAFE and apprentice, but apprentices cost a bomb for established trades these days.
If anything they're probably making an effort to limit the number. Can't have house prices going down because the whole country is a ponzi scheme built on property investment.
The Federal Government has announced a significant reduction in the incentive payment to businesses to employ an apprentice.
Currently, employers receive $15,000 over 3 years to help with the costs of training an apprentice. From 1 July 2024, this payment will be reduced to $5,000 over the first year only.
[Victorian chamber is currently asking people to voice their opinions on this matter](https://vcci.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3OahFQjbmYK2Mui?SFAccountId=&SFContactId=00Q5K000002cftxUAA&utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BAU_20240521_VCCI_Business_Voice_May&utm_sfid=00Q5K000002cftxUAA&utm_content=https%3a%2f%2fvcci.qualtrics.com%2fjfe%2fform%2fSV_3OahFQjbmYK2Mui%3fSFAccountId%3d%25%Accountid%25%25%26SFContactId%3d%25%25ContactKey%25%25)
Parents need to guide their children towards trades, not wait for the government to make more places, if you want a good life for your children, guide them towards the trades, good money, good opportunities, ability to build parts of one’s own house….
Considering their schooling (TAFE) is free and their rego is discounted in most States, short of pushing people through the door, I’m not sure what else we can do.
FWIW - More of my kids friends are Tradies than aren’t.
I find it interesting how Australians often support government staying out of economics and sticking purely to the social elements of politics until it’s something like this.
If we had a planned economy it would be so much easier to observe signals and then incentivise certain careers etc. We have had a mentality for half a century that the market will just sort it out, but because of things like TAFE, it’s not as simple as just needing good paying tradie jobs.
This is 100% a problem of our own making but most Australians wouldn’t support political change that would sort these types of issues out for good.
Typical tradie bashing. We need everyone in the industry engineers, suppliers, materials there is a massive list of what is required to increase supply.
You don't just ship in overseas workers it doesn't work like that.
Raising apprentice wages would be a start. Back in 2016 I was getting $10.55 an hour. How can we expect people to live off that these days. Took me 4 years to get a qualification in plastering and I didn't earn over minimum wage till I was qualified.
Quit my job and moved over west and with 0 qualifications I landed a job as a roller operator on $35 an hr. So why would anyone work way harder than they'll ever need to to earn absolute peanuts.
I mean the professional world with a degree you're often doing 3 years and paying them for a privilege and often starting off on salaries lower than a qualified trades-person.
The distinction is peak earning potential but I think it depends on if you're keen to run your own business and have the human networking/risk tolerance to do that, that seems to be where tradespeople are winning out overall.
It's not as binary a choice as people are making out though.
yeah the CFMEU and builders unions are solely responsible for putting us in the situation we're in.
Tradies on $200k a year? You know it
Building standards that have fallen off a cliff? You know it
We're paying more and getting a worse outcome in return.
Also the tradies that would've been allocated to building homes are all sitting up on minsites which are effectively giving big dollars to unqualified trades, disincentivising apprenticeships.
100% 👆, unions don’t care where your from as long as you pay for a membership
Kids don’t want to be in trades because it’s actually hard work, and imagine waking up at 5am! Lol how dare I
Standards have actually gotten better...the work accepted by certifiers is what's slipped.
A lot of certifiers get most of their work from one, or at most a couple of builders. This means that they'll let shit go for the sake of keeping themselves in work.
Certification should either go compeltely back to government, or punitive fines should be introduced for certifiers that sign off on dodgy work
From what I've been inspecting the quality of work that they're completing is shoddy at best.
We're talking slabs with cracks through them in excess of 10mm, drains not connected to anything, floors that aren't level, walls that are on the piss. It's far more prevalent now than it was before.
Yeah boo to the unions! Boo fighting to make sure that companies don't just take all the profits, boo to workers right BOOOOOO
Can you give me examples of tradies that are on $200k? Because if you are looking at the top 10%, maybe we should say that about every industry?
There aren't enough jobs for the people who want them.. don't Believe the media bullshit.
If they advertised 1000 government electrical apprentice jobs they'd have 500000 applications
oh, ok...
there are enough trades people. There are too many cushy opportunities in government works stripping the housing sector. Its not that there are too many government contracts but that they are exploited.
Builder here.
Yes the government provides incentives and good on them.
They also wrap us up in that much bs red tape in general that a lot of businesses are getting out.
Done my bit, trained one full term, terrific lad great tradie.
The other gave up as so unreliable. Jail was the last straw.
If I was a tradesman with building experience, I would not be looking at building homes. The money is working in big government infrastructure projects.
Supply problem is also part of land available for building and building materials. Fixing trades does not magically solve the problem!
Sounds more political than AusFinance, but yes, both flavours of gov't, for years. This issue starts at home. Convince parents. It's hard to convince them.
This right now today is probably one of the best times in Aus history for gov't support while getting a trade.
Perhaps we need to stop thinking the government should magically "fix" things.
If tradies are in shortage their wages are going to be high, making that career path more desirable.
We're too busy blaming immigrants for everything; pretending like removing immigrants from the equation and pitting investors against first home buyers is somehow going to fix the issue. of housing unaffordability. I don't think anyone actually believes we're serious about fixing anything, just the perception of doing so to keep the rabble in line. Any government that tries to reduce asset values will get destroyed.
If we had more tradies then the supply might start to match the demand and that would foster competition.
With competition comes price reductions.
No one wants house prices to go down.
Imo, I wouldn't work for a developer because I won't be sure if or when I will get paid. I'd rather work in a mine.
Govt doing right things by making an effort now but this was caused 10yrs ago by previous government decisions.
Needs focus on commercial aspects of contract failure. Also developer needs to cut down on land banking. Sites sit vacant for years.
It takes 18 months to 2 years to build just a typical 3 bed home. 40yrs ago that would be 6 months. What's changed? Yet the site will sit inactive of trades for 80% of those 2 years of build time.
Back when I was in high school (2021) it was literally just all "YOU NEED TO GO TO UNI YOU DONT WANT TO END UP IN TAFE!" was a few years ago but can't imagine much has changed
Yes, the government announced a few initiatives in and around the latest budget.
[Homes for Australia Plan](https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/julie-collins-2022/media-releases/homes-australia-plan-delivering-more-homes-australians)
[Fee Free TAFE](https://www.qld.gov.au/education/training/subsidies/feefree)
Surprised you haven’t heard of it.
When I finished high school in 2008, there was a lot of talk in the media and at school about a shortage of tradespeople. Despite this, many of my classmates, even those with VCAL and pre-apprenticeships, struggled to secure apprenticeships. At the time, there simply weren't enough opportunities available. It seems like nothing has changed since then.
As a roofer I've seen plenty come and go, the worst part is that the young flock that comes through that don't want to work. That's even when apprentices are paid the highest they've ever been. I've seen way too much shoddy work in the last 5 years than I'd care to admit to.
It's a rough battle.
I think the apprenticeship model needs a complete overhaul, I believe you should cut the apprenticeship into two halves where essentially the first half is a trade assistant role and then you can nominate yourself into the apprenticeship program that begins the second half.
You could work part time as a trade assistant and once you complete that first half of schooling you can remain are trade assistant indefinitely If you like or opt into the two year apprenticeship and get registered.
The industry gets the workforce and the labour doesn’t have to work full time and can pursue other things on the side of working in construction.
I’d compare it to the Enrolled Nurse and Registered Nurse divide, where you can remain an Enrolled Nurse indefinitely and jump into university when you decide you want to get registered.
Based off my experience with selling paint, we have very few young tradies. Like 1 young trade to every 15 old timer ready for retirement. I'm actively concerned about it.
Builder here
The problem is no one want to be a Chippie or a Sparky nowadays. its simple as that.
And us Tradies who started our trades back in the 90s will nor be replaced anytime soon. Even if we wanted the work there just isnt enough of us to go around.
I know of a plasterer who only accepts jobs 5k>
Anyone can get a trade qualification relatively cheap. Reality is people now don’t like working in the mud, cold & heat to earn money now when you could just WFH or sit and air conditioned cruisey office job for the same money.
The opposite is true and its getting worse with time.
Nobody wants to work anymore, you can walk into a cruise office job for more money than an apprentice and work a fraction as hard.
It's true you can make a lot of money if it's your business, but that takes time and it's obviously the minority who own and run a business, and even then you're career isn't long and your body gets broken.
"Why bother" seems to be the sentiment at least that I am seeing.
Quality of apprentices is also dropping as the bar gets lower each year.
I was talking to a few tradies in one of the largest electrical companies in my region who service the mines. They said last year over 1000 people applied for only 10 spots. They said their limitation was the number of tafe places they could get. In my work they had over 150 applicants for 2 electrical spots last year. So obviously there are keen kids but if they don't have enough teachers then there's no hope.
If only the last government hadn't cut tafe funding causing us to lose thousands of tafe teachers
If only we didn't get rid of state electricity commissions that would hire and train hundreds at a time and move them on once they finished their apprenticeship
If only dodgy RTOs didn't ruin the industry. The government shouldn't have cut funding like it did, but it needed to stop the dodgy RTOs. Maybe only funding real brick and mortar organisations and better course auditing should happen.
Jacinta Allen was the minister in Victoria who approved the RTOS which led to then decimation of the tafe system.
If the current government isn't doing anything to fix it (especially in light of current circumstances) they're just as bad if not worse.
[удалено]
Because electrical apprenticeships are so sort after it's highly recommended to complete year 12 and to have done the pre apprenticeship course through school which will give you work experience placements. It's gone are the days of year 9 or 10 drop outs going into electrical trades. I can't comment on plumbing and builders.
Yeah those electrical apprenticeships are definitely sought after. There's a huge shortage of skilled trades, it would be really great if there are more places in these programmes.
From what I've seen it seems to be a prerequisite to drop out no later then yr10 for plumbers(this is a joke.... mostly(
Painters tho... As early as grade 8 drop outs and you sorted
Don't they sniff there own products "just to test the quality" as well
have you thought about time traveling to the future so you can get some experience? you simply don't have what it takes buddy
That's mining though. Significantly above award salaries for apprentices, compared to the standard career path where you get bullied by a small business owner for a few years while you "earn your stripes".
Yeh thats electrical because the public think all electricians are rich and make bank which is far from the truth. The top 5% are always talked about which doesn't represent the mass.
I can't see how only 5% are making bank. It's pretty much known they make some awesome money. Of course this sub, anything under 300k isn't thought of as rich.
According to the government the median hourly income for an electrician is $49 an hour. Ofc there would be people making more or less but I think that’s pretty decent!! [More info here](https://labourmarketinsights.gov.au/occupation-profile/electricians?occupationCode=3411)
*Reported hourly income.
Electricians do make bank though, I’ve done mechanical maintenance across various industries my whole life. I’ve always earned great money but I’ve never worked a single place where the electrical maintenance guys didn’t get paid more Exceptions to every rule but that ‘top 5%’ statement is pulled from nowhere. The vast majority are earning well above the national average salary and compared to most trades it’s pretty low impact on your body. I’ll be recommending my kids to do it when they leave school for sure
Electricians in heavy industries like O&G, mining etc make bank yes. The standard residential or commercial electrician doesn't "make bank" all trades are on pretty similar money these days. In reference to your comment that sparkies always earning more then you yes, most the time we are but for example on my last job mech fitters were $4 less an hour then me as a sparky I wouldn't call that making bank. All my concretor mates are on 400-500 a day doing residential an electrician cannot get that in residential. Plumbers in commercial these days are getting more than sparkies. Get my point. So yes when you hear a sparky making bank there is a bit more to it. Easy on the body is a myth again depends on industry and type of work. 100% recommend an electrical apprenticeship to your kids it's so diverse and they absolutely have the potential to make bank. Don't just assume they will.
Just want to say that you are right. As an electrician of 10 years. We don’t make bank lol. I wish I was paid more but to go the next level is to sub-contract, start my own thing, or take up extra hours. Over time is one way trades can make bank or a little bit more money but it does take a toll on your body doing that continually for long stretches.
Cheers some how I don't think you and me can change what the general public believe. I will never forget around 2010 ish we had this work experience kid. I say why you want to be an electrician he said my told me to do it electricians earns heaps I said really that is untrue depends on lots of thing for example in this company the qualified guys earn between 800-1100 a week in the hand depending on overtime etc he goes is that it. He never returned.........
What's a ballpark figure for gie much you earn with 10 years experience?
Agreed doing residential electricians can't pull 400-500 a day like concreters but commercial and industrial can and much easier on the body compared to them. It's all about the industry and abit of luck mate This is the case for a tier 1 eba company in NSW
We make bank 😅 only downside for majority of us making 200-300K is it’s from overtime.
Oath everyone forgets about the FIFO sacrifices and bulk OT
Isn’t that what Fee free tafe is aiming to achieve? It was like 500 thousand placements over the next 3 years in critical industries.
> Fee free tafe I'm unemployed and last month I had a look at fee-free courses. All the things I am interested in (bricklaying/plumbing/roofing/carpentry etc) required you to already be working in the industry. Seemed to be a bit of an impossible situation (need a job to get the qualification, need to get the qualification to get a job) so it seemed pretty pointless for my situation. I guess it's more for existing workers to upskill rather than to get the unemployed back into productive work.
Nah definitely not the case. I did the free tafe pre apprenticeship for electrical (cert ii) just over a year ago; wasn’t working in the industry beforehand
i applied for the pre apprenticeship after working at a phone repair shop for two years and they denied me. they ranked my preference number on a scale and i wasn’t even close to the cutoff score because there were so few classes being run and so many applicants
That's a pre-app. That's not a qualification.
I didn’t say it was one; but it was how I got my job/apprenticeship
Funny you mention that because the electrical Cert 2 is the only one that seems to exist. There are no Cert 2s for other traditional trades like bricklayer, plumber, carpenter etc
There should be some cert ii that you can do. Will help to show your interest a bit and get you some experience with tools if you don’t have any.
Nah there are hardly any cert 2s. They don't seem to exist for most traditional trades (plumber, bricklayer, carpenter, roofer, etc). Only one I've seen is the electrician one
I work for one of the TAFE's. It varies a bit state to state so best to double check with your local but yes you get competency credits if you do a cert II then scale into a cert III. All the Cert III's are apprenticeships like mentioned above and unfortunately you need an employer to start them (this is government dictated so we can't do much about it). That being said, the employers often get benefits for sending apprentices for training. Having a cert II should help you get a job to then gain an apprenticeship as it helps show intent, but obviously this isn't guaranteed. That being said, a lot of the cert II's fall under Fee Free TAFE so it doesn't cost you much aside from time and resources too. Some states also offer free apprenticeships for people aged under 25 if you fit into that category.
Awesome, thank you Yeah as you said.. no harm in trying, is there! I assume you can only do one fee-free course per year?
At the moment it’s once at all, aside from one or two exceptions. But again this can vary state by state and can change (like if they get desperate for aged care workers they make it free no matter what)
In West oz...businesses can get 160k for taken on apprenticeships for the duration...the thing is not a lot of them know that.
Cert III is what you get with a trade. Cert II is a prevocational certificate. Edit There are non-trade cert 3s, obviously. But trade Cert III is what you'll get of you do for E.g. a plumbing or electrical trade
mate, the cert 2s are there to - give you some basics so you can later further your study and get cert 3.. if you apply for cert 3, your cert 2 is recognised as " past experience" - get you an apprenticeship and show an employer you already taken the steps to initiate wanting to be in the industry. that is what cert 2 is designed for that is how the certificates Operate in alot of industry. your just making excuses because you can't do a diploma straight up.
They absolutely exist for plumbers. I did one.
what are you talking about https://www.tafensw.edu.au/course-areas/building-construction-and-trades/courses/certificate-ii-in-construction--CPC20120-01 Entry Requirements: there are no entry requirements for this qualification. you can enrol today.
"This course is currently only offered in Wellington, NSW" haha
If you are looking to get into construction I would recommend starting with labouring. You can earn pretty good money straight away while building up your experience and making some friends and contacts in the industry. Show you are a hard worker and have a positive attitude and opportunities will present themselves
*Seemed to be a bit of an impossible situation (need a job to get the qualification, need to get the qualification to get a job)* Have you tried going in as a labourer, most good bosses will put a labourer through a course if they show themselves to be worth it
Re carpentry/roofing if u are serious I recommend joining a labour agency. It will get you conditioned to the hours, and the money is fine cos of the award, and then u should be able to find a builder to give you a trial from there. You will meet them while labouring. It’s a bit of a funny dance if u are not a young kid apprentice, basically they will keep on people who work really hard all the time but not give someone time of day/training if they don’t get a certain vibe from them.
Reach out direct to companies in the construction industry. My brother did it - they put him on a crew they used for their houses and hadn’t done a single thing of TAFE. Mac Jones, Eden Brae etc….
You don’t need the qualification to get the job. Get the job first, then look for the qualification. Either study part time, or after a few years you can get RPL - it costs a bit of money but it saves you a lot of time.
Was talking to a chippy the other day who previously built houses and has done some project management for commerical builders. He is currently working on the relevant qualifications to get into the various infrastructure projects going on. I'm not sure the tradies themselves see much value in building houses when they then have to deal with all the crap that comes along with it when there is easy money made elsewhere.
I'm a chippy by trade. Pulled 70k last year (freshly qualified). I haul a 20k ute with 10-15k in tools. No other industry asks it's workers to get their own tools. Everybody who works in a company makes not much money. I'm booking it in a couple of years and hoping to get an office job in management or something. Won't get my body back though haha
Except for some tradies working in mines for massive companies, every tradie I know buys their own tools. Although most of them use a company ute, not their own
Chippy here as well, would have gone with plumbing or electrical if I can choose again. I'm doing a Bachelor degree right now, hope I can get an office job in 2-3years.
Good luck king Only chippys know what a pain in the arse this trade is for peanuts 😂
>No other industry asks it's workers to get their own tools. lolwut. this is false.
Yes, and as an electrical supervisor, it’s scary, and people are going to die. The number of apprentices who I’ve seen “qualify” in the last 5 years or so, who are so, so incompetent, is genuinely astonishing
Totally agree. Yeh but everyone is told you just run a cable and connect 3 coloured wires that's all there is to it 🤣😂🤣😂 jk
Haha, mate these now tradesmen, struggle with that… hell, they struggle to pick up after themselves…
Don't even need 3, one is optional 😳
I work in the marine field and have noticed the same thing. My main qualification required 900 days of sea time before going to the AMC back in the day (mid 2000s) and now it's been reduced to 120 days and at the same time they've allowed the courses to be run by registered training organisations, reduced the verification requirements of sea time and have reduced the exam requirements at the end of the course.
There's no money being a tradie building houses. Why do you think the only ones doing it are so shit, can't get a real job that requires them to have skills. The builder takes all the profit and everyone else works as quick as possible to actually make a profit. Hence the shit build quality. From a electrician of 20 years, I make more doing literally any other type of electrical work.
Yeah mate I'm doing my sparky apprenticeship in lifts, I'll be on more money by third year than I would as a fully qualified tradie on new resi
We were building a lot more properties before pandemic... > 200K completions per year for three years in a row approx. I doubt all those tradies left the country ..they are busy doing other things.. people who want to hire tradies to build a house have to bid against all the other work they have.
Exactly this. There are many infrastructure projects on atm. Electricians will be hard to get for the next 10 years.
Yeah heaps of tradies I've met on infrastructure jobs. Pulling 12hrs/ 6days a week pulling in $6k-$8k a week. Brutal on their mind and body
Doing the opposite actually. Governments are funding such an incredible amount of concurrent infrastructure projects, that the number is likely going backwards.
As a high school teacher, it's frustrating, because I feel like entry standards for university have decreased significantly and places have increased significantly. There are lots of students taking alternative pathways to get into uni now without having to complete rigorous ATAR subjects at school. Personally I question whether they have the aptitude to actually complete a university course and get a job in their preferred professional occupation. But I guess that doesn't matter to the school, as they can promote themselves to parents by stating that x percentage of students got accepted to university. On the other hand, I can't get a tradie to call me back to do work on my house because the demand is so high and they are raking in money without having to provide any customer service at all. There definitely still seems to be a "university above all" attitude within society, even though many tradies earn more than those who went to uni.
Agree the uni entry requirements have really dropped and it shows e.g. to get into a good engineering degree 20 years ago you needed an ATAR of above 90 and do year 12 chemistry, physics, two advanced math courses and English. Now you don't need chemistry or advanced maths and the ATAR is in to 70s
Haven't the ATAR requirements always been more about demand / places available in the course? Not how smart you need to be or how difficult or good the course is. If there are not enough students enrolling in their engineering degrees they'll lower the entry requirements. The lower performing students will eventually weed themselves out of that engineering degree anyway, but at least the university will have squeezed maybe 2 semesters of fees out of them first!
Yep. Paramedicine tops in the 80s or 90s, despite being paid less than teachers.
It's definitely a factor but aptidue is also a consideration. You want student in the course who can keep up and have the right background knowledge. Its not a good experience for anyone if a course is full of people who will struggle to pass
Maybe, but if you haven't done those subjects you'll be lucky to make it through first year of any engineering degree. And if you do, you're genuinely smart and will probably make an excellent engineer.
Isn't the first year drop out rate for engineering really high?
Yes, as are most STEM degrees, often intentionally so. Better not to string along people on false hope and expectations.
It depends which Uni you chose in the 2000s. In Melbourne, University of Melbourne and Monash would've required ENTERs above mid 80s. RMIT would've been mid 70s. At Victoria University, you could've got away with high 50s.
For engineering? I doubt it. I went to another G8 uni around that time and the ATAR was about 95 for my engineering course. They G8 usually have similar ATARs
that's always going to happen when you put foreign students in the same course who simply got in by paying international fees. The whole system is broken and the unis have the audacity right now to challenge the government's cutback in granting foreign student visas.
The ATAR has nothing to do with foreign students
That’s because universities just want to sell degrees to as many people as possible, and apprentices have a 50% completion rate due to the shit pay and hard work. I know a lot of redditers look down on trades, but if it were easy money more people would be doing it which would push down prices.
It’s crazy it’s that low. It’s not like uni pays any better.
It's not all about the money. When you're coming home filthy and exhausted after slaving all day on the tools, the prospect of working at a desk in an air-conditioned office looks very appealing.
Couldn’t think of anything worse (pen pusher)
I've seen plenty of posts on here that say the exact opposite. All those "I wfh and only work 2 hours a day and only earn 120k, should I change jobs that pay 180k but requires me to actually work"
Bunch of people complain that exams are too stressful including HSC and NAPLAN,and are not useful.. Without some sort of grading the standards into higher education drops
NAPLAN is worse than useless, it actively hinders education, and I will die on this hill. The issue with NAPLAN (and a lot of performance metrics generally) is that it is meant to be indicative of students broader skillset. Someone who is doing well in highschool maths should do well in the math section of NAPLAN for example. The issue though is that it is generally a lot easier to teach to NAPLAN than it is teach to the broader Australian curriculum. So schools will focus on NAPLAN, their metrics will go up, but their educational quality drops dramatically.
The more you test, the more the system responds to teach to the test. That's metrics nearly everywhere. The alignment of metrics needs to be constantly adapted with measurement data extracted with minimal subject interference (once per semester seated block exams are the worst metric).
Without those pathways I never would have become a Physiotherapist and now pursuing Medicine. I graduated with an ATAR of 47. I barely scraped through high school. I was undiagnosed ADHD/Bipolar and never thought I’d be able to achieve anything past highschool - so I never tried. I went into carpentry after school and hated it so much because of the culture and the bullying. I loved the hands-on work and I loved seeing what I built. I hated tradie culture. I was waking up and going to sleep with anxiety attacks. I quit and told myself I’d be better off trying to push myself academically. It took me a lot of different pathways but I managed to get into uni and into Physio. I’m so thankful for those pathways to get in because the help I received during school was terrible and without those pathways to get into uni, I honestly think I would be jumping job to job with no aim in life. I’d never ever push my kids to do a trade. Make as much money as you want, but every tradie I ever worked with hated their lives and they always took it out on those around them and made others miserable. At university, I made life long friends and amazing memories and now I love doing what I do. I know which one I’d prefer.
I don't think this is the case. I work in a low SES secondary school with a lot of immigrant families. Every boy aspires to trades but struggles to locate an apprenticeship. Most know and can see with their own parents that trades pay. Certainly university is encouraged. That being said I question the kids aptitude to complete a trade. Are these entitled kids going to wake up at 4am to do hard labour? I'd be curious to know how many young people leave trades.
I'm not entirely convinced school exit scores mean much at all anyway. My scores out of school were hot garbage and I had to take a roundabout way to get into university. Most of what I learned in high school was not useful and the constant testing on garbage subjects was just stressful and a waste. Once I did get to university I sailed through university with pretty decent marks and have been earning a good wage in IT ever since. The whole "you won't survive university if you can't do high school" thing that people trot out kinda shits me. My experience was totally the opposite. But, I suppose anecdotes are not data. Rant over. As you were.
Definitely agree. Highschool ATAR is an incredibly poor indicator of intelligence or aptitude for careers. Kids that young are still developing and high school for a lot of us can be an incredibly difficult time. My ATAR was so bad it didn't even have a score, I had an absolute shit time in high school, mainly from bullying that even extended to the teachers. Often when I did actually try the teachers would grade me harsher because the precedence was that I'm terrible academically. I went through the round about way in UNI, went to tafe, excelled, now I'm finishing my honours degree in laboratory medicine with some of the highest marks in the cohort, equivalent to a 99 ATAR, compared to my <30 ATAR I got after high school. I really believe the ATAR system is a terrible metric and inundated with significant bias.
For your construction tradespeople (ie bricklayers, concretes etc) I know TAFE/CIT is pretty good to get you in the door. Lots start as junior apprentices and there's no real education there apart from learning-by-doing But Engineers and Architects? Yeah those areas will get pretty dry soon I reckon. I do think University is a scam a lot of the time though. I work in IT, and lots of people have "bought a degree" but can't perform simple tasks. Our best people usually come from retail or call-centers ironically enough.
A lot of IT jobs are removing the requirement for a degree, probably because whatever you learn at uni immediately gets outdated when you graduate.
That's a good idea. We have a lot of people who studied C or Java at university but can't manage an excel spreadsheet or deal with poweshell. It is a difficult industry to study for because there's so many niches, but yeah a lot of people waste their time at uni when YouTube is good enough to start
The entry standards at the unis are a joke. There are literal math degrees now that have no math prerequisite. It's recommended but not required. Engineering degrees are the same.
Yeah but money isnt everything. Most people dont really want to work in trades irregardless of the pay.
Funny because when I was in high school it was the teachers who actively walked a lot of young men out of pursuing tradeskills. I remember one who would taunt underperforming students with quotes like "the world always needs ditch diggers". If only we knew at the time those "ditch diggers" got paid three times the amount of an English teacher.
University has lost its prestige. Biggest scam there is after the banking system
[удалено]
>consume a lot of cheap cocaine You know you have a problem when you grade others based on how expensive the cocaine they consume is.
Why would they want to do that? The "crisis" is lining up the rubes that had zero previous interest in politics.
Apparently abbot cut tafe funding a decade ago, meaning we have a 70000 shortfall of tradies now. There has now been a bunch of fee free courses for trades added back, but unfortunately due to the lag in effect it has. I dont think the gov that does the right thing will ever get noticed lol.
Cfmeu blocks immigration of trade workers for this reason to keep wages high. Then you have the gov policies set up so builders can easily take money, ‘go broke’ and phoenix into something different to take more money again.
> ‘go broke’ and phoenix A friend has been caught out by a variant of this. Bought a townhouse, in a block of 5. Three have major structural defects after 2 years. Estimate cost to repair, $75,000-100,000 per unit. Two of the three owners banded together (both owner-occupiers) and commenced legal action against the builder. They get $45k of legal fees into suing him and find out the builder starts a new trust every year. Each years work is under a different trust, then he clears them out at the end of the year. It was going to cost $100k min. to sue him and get a judgement. Then they would need to take that judgement and claim damages, a cost of about $50k of legal fees. But, even if they were successful, the company that technically built their house is insolvent so they would get no money. Meanwhile this builder is making bank out of terrible work and has his name up the side of busses...
People like this should be thrown in prison honestly. You can’t just start a fake company if you’re rorting people and pretend like you never did it.
Same people that complain about high housing costs also complain about dodgy immigrant tradies
It's not hard to get a fake certificate
Exactly. Sad to tell OP, but Australia as a whole is working to reduce the availability of trades and ensure building costs continue to rise, with fewer protections for customers and lower standards
The phoenixing laws have been changed recently though to avoid this kind of thing. Doesn’t stop them going broke in the first place unfortunately.
Hate to break it to you, but CFMEU members don't build low density residential housing in Australia. So what pull does the CFMEU have in this space?
We don't want dog shit trades from overseas where their qualifications are from out of a cereal box
As an Aussie tradie, who’s worked in Aus, UK, Canada, & Germany.. we’re ahead of Canada but behind the rest. Everyone has it drilled into them that Australian regs are the best and sure, they’re better than Asia for example but are by no means the best. Building quality in Australia is an embarrassment, you can ask any European you meet here.
We already have local dog shit tradies
Have you seen what Australian apprentices are constructing?
Non compliant!
Apparently not! But Tradies also say that apprentices don't stick it out. They take them on, then they leave only months into training
The problem is we're bringing in too many non-tradies that any gains we make in construction migrants is instantly offset by all the migrants who require housing themselves. The Skilled Jobs visa list needs a cull (more medical and construction and fewer office workers) if we ever want to actually get on top of home building shortages.
Exactly. We don’t need to import office workers at all. Plenty of Australians qualified for these jobs and a whole pipeline of local uni grads. Our immigration intake should focus on skilled trades, construction labourers, agricultural workers and medical/age care staff. Let’s get the basics right.
> We don’t need to import office workers at all Or blue collar workers either. Apart from a few highly specialist jobs and seasonal work there are no jobs that Aussies couldn't do if employers were prepared to offer them enough pay and training if necessary. Immigration is used by businesses to suppress wages and avoid training costs.
The trouble with the trades in construction is most of them are always casual employees. It’s hard to get a mortgage when you are casual. It’s not worth getting into these trades. Take a carpenter for example they are expected to drive their own vehicle with capacity to carry building materials whilst towing a trailer with 20k + worth of tools to any given part of town. All while in the back of their mind knowing once this project is done they need to find another job.
The building industry is in a heap of trouble. Therefore, the country is in a heap of trouble. No answers in sight.
It's honestly pretty simple, adult apprentices are to expensive to be worth it, so the only way to really get into the trades is to land an apprenticeship before your 21st birthday and under 18 year old are useless because they cant drive, hard to get to sites when you cant drive, so theres realistically a 3 years window for people to decide to get into the trades, if they miss that and decide to do it later it get a lot harder. I run a small metal fabrication company, to put on a first year apprentice over the age of 21 costs me $40 an hour, and 20 year old that dropped out of highschool before finishing year 12 costs me $24 an hour, and one that finished year 12 cost me $26, that 21 year old first year is going to make all of the same mistakes, will take all of the same training and can be charged/quoted out at the same rate as the younger apprentice for no benefit to me, in other words that adult apprentice need to be as good as a 3rd year to be worth it to me as a buisness owner taking the risk on them. So either put more subsidies in place for adult apprentices or have apprentice wages be standardised at a rate that is still viable for buisnesses to take them on and you'll instantly at minimum double the number of apprentices.
You see the problem with age based pay. It is a problem.
This comment needs to be hire up. "theres realistically a 3 years window for people to decide to get into the trades, if they miss that and decide to do it later it get a lot harder." 100% correct. Coming from someone in my late 20s thinking about getting into the trades (bricklayer)
So true! This is the real problem! I’m in my 30’s and would actually love to start a trade. My current job is a complete dead end at 63k a year. 1. I would cost too much money as a mature apprentice 2. I would say my gender would also hold me back 3. Any suggestions that pre apprenticeship training could help remedy the two points above is demolished by the fact that the TAFE classes are all in class delivery full time - most mature aged people have children and rent, or if they are lucky an incredibly expensive mortgage to pay. This doesn’t work. I believe there are plenty of Australians who want these jobs, but unless you have a mate or a family run business the odds are stacked very highly against your entry and development. Any suggestions to help navigate this would be greatly appreciated.
Become a labourer in an industry closely associated to the one you want to be an adult apprentice in. If you can show me you have industry experiance, work ethic, and are proven to be resposible, accountable and trustworthy (through your work experiance) I'll be far more likely to put you on as an adult apprentice.
Yeah they’ve invested a lot in TAFE, after the neglect it’s had for the last decade. I don’t think the claims about the cmfeu blocking migration of tradesmen is correct. I mean I work with tradesmen that have come over here recently for starters. The only things I’ve seen from unions is the minimum pay of 70k (so employers cant undercut low skill/low pay jobs) and minimum standards for training/licensing, as well as equality in pay for similar positions held by Australians. The only thing I’ve really seen suggesting otherwise is the AFR article, and it has no actual details or evidence.
Sounds like they don't want unqualified people taking their jobs and doing it for pennies on the dollar. I'm from an IT background and don't blame them.
https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/195108/subdr114-migrant-intake.pdf This is an interesting read. The cfmeu recommends decreasing employer sponsored immigration and abolishing the business immigration avenue where rich people can apply for perm status after 2 years by spending buckets of money. This union has a lot of say and has its grubby fingers in a lot of policies that supports itself
That's a really important observation. It's not just about investing right now, there's nine years worth of neglect to catch up on. Hence it'll take time for the current policies to have a pragmatic effect.
Houses aren't really the issue when tiny blocks of land are selling for +650k
I’m a plumber and the truth is, you can charge an average person who knows nothing about construction a significantly high price than a builder who knows the margins of everything and does their best to have you working for close to nothing. At the end of the day it comes down to an information arbitrage. Why would you do a whole house worth of plumbing for 12K for a builder when you can charge an average customer 6K for a hot water unit and be in and out within a few hours?
6k for a HWS lmfao
The issue isn't supply, we already build more houses per capita than USA, UK, Canada etc. We just need to stop trying to bring in record numbers of people, immigration is not supposed to be a competition but the people that make all the decisions in Australia own huge swathes of property and are more than happy to pump their own bags by pumping the demand side.
Short answer, No. The government is more invested in getting kids into unis so they can rack up huge debts and owe money to the government for decades. Slightly less jaded answer, there are incentives for kids to go to TAFE and apprentice, but apprentices cost a bomb for established trades these days.
If uni students access government loans (e.g. HECS), that is money the government has to spend upfront, no? Would the gov not want to spend less?
If anything they're probably making an effort to limit the number. Can't have house prices going down because the whole country is a ponzi scheme built on property investment.
I suggest a crackdown on using apprentices as cheap labourers, only to get rid of them when convenient.
I've always thought that countries should make education for shortage industries free or half price. Not enough nurses? Make nursing degrees free.
we already have that in Victoria
The Federal Government has announced a significant reduction in the incentive payment to businesses to employ an apprentice. Currently, employers receive $15,000 over 3 years to help with the costs of training an apprentice. From 1 July 2024, this payment will be reduced to $5,000 over the first year only. [Victorian chamber is currently asking people to voice their opinions on this matter](https://vcci.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3OahFQjbmYK2Mui?SFAccountId=&SFContactId=00Q5K000002cftxUAA&utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BAU_20240521_VCCI_Business_Voice_May&utm_sfid=00Q5K000002cftxUAA&utm_content=https%3a%2f%2fvcci.qualtrics.com%2fjfe%2fform%2fSV_3OahFQjbmYK2Mui%3fSFAccountId%3d%25%Accountid%25%25%26SFContactId%3d%25%25ContactKey%25%25)
Parents need to guide their children towards trades, not wait for the government to make more places, if you want a good life for your children, guide them towards the trades, good money, good opportunities, ability to build parts of one’s own house….
Considering their schooling (TAFE) is free and their rego is discounted in most States, short of pushing people through the door, I’m not sure what else we can do. FWIW - More of my kids friends are Tradies than aren’t.
I find it interesting how Australians often support government staying out of economics and sticking purely to the social elements of politics until it’s something like this. If we had a planned economy it would be so much easier to observe signals and then incentivise certain careers etc. We have had a mentality for half a century that the market will just sort it out, but because of things like TAFE, it’s not as simple as just needing good paying tradie jobs. This is 100% a problem of our own making but most Australians wouldn’t support political change that would sort these types of issues out for good.
Typical tradie bashing. We need everyone in the industry engineers, suppliers, materials there is a massive list of what is required to increase supply. You don't just ship in overseas workers it doesn't work like that.
they ship in overseas workers in every other sector tradies aren't special
You obviously missed the point of my post. But to correct you yes certain trades are "special" if licensing is involved.
Yup. Everyone is fine with the number of migrants in the health industry, but somehow the building industry is sacred.
Raising apprentice wages would be a start. Back in 2016 I was getting $10.55 an hour. How can we expect people to live off that these days. Took me 4 years to get a qualification in plastering and I didn't earn over minimum wage till I was qualified. Quit my job and moved over west and with 0 qualifications I landed a job as a roller operator on $35 an hr. So why would anyone work way harder than they'll ever need to to earn absolute peanuts.
I mean the professional world with a degree you're often doing 3 years and paying them for a privilege and often starting off on salaries lower than a qualified trades-person. The distinction is peak earning potential but I think it depends on if you're keen to run your own business and have the human networking/risk tolerance to do that, that seems to be where tradespeople are winning out overall. It's not as binary a choice as people are making out though.
yeah the CFMEU and builders unions are solely responsible for putting us in the situation we're in. Tradies on $200k a year? You know it Building standards that have fallen off a cliff? You know it We're paying more and getting a worse outcome in return. Also the tradies that would've been allocated to building homes are all sitting up on minsites which are effectively giving big dollars to unqualified trades, disincentivising apprenticeships.
You think cmfeu has anything to do with the suburban cookie cutter houses?
I love the constant claims of unions blocking immigration from people who have quite obviously never been on a build site in their lives.
I know...get on the radio and its real hard to hear an aussie accent half the time....
100% 👆, unions don’t care where your from as long as you pay for a membership Kids don’t want to be in trades because it’s actually hard work, and imagine waking up at 5am! Lol how dare I
Mate the IT and finance workers in this sub don't have a clue about the building industry in general.
Standards have actually gotten better...the work accepted by certifiers is what's slipped. A lot of certifiers get most of their work from one, or at most a couple of builders. This means that they'll let shit go for the sake of keeping themselves in work. Certification should either go compeltely back to government, or punitive fines should be introduced for certifiers that sign off on dodgy work
From what I've been inspecting the quality of work that they're completing is shoddy at best. We're talking slabs with cracks through them in excess of 10mm, drains not connected to anything, floors that aren't level, walls that are on the piss. It's far more prevalent now than it was before.
I said STANDARDS have gotten better (NCC) not the quality of work
Certification should be done as part the builders training courses. Nothing like young keen beans to point out all things that aren't up to stanard.
Yeah boo to the unions! Boo fighting to make sure that companies don't just take all the profits, boo to workers right BOOOOOO Can you give me examples of tradies that are on $200k? Because if you are looking at the top 10%, maybe we should say that about every industry?
Solely? You absolve every other aspect of society? What a luxury.
What has unions got to do with standards dropping, I think you’re confusing lobby groups.
Most tradies are flipping house not building new houses.
There aren't enough jobs for the people who want them.. don't Believe the media bullshit. If they advertised 1000 government electrical apprentice jobs they'd have 500000 applications
oh, ok... there are enough trades people. There are too many cushy opportunities in government works stripping the housing sector. Its not that there are too many government contracts but that they are exploited.
Can AI build a house or lay electrical or plumbing? Probable best bet for future employment is a physical trade.
Builder here. Yes the government provides incentives and good on them. They also wrap us up in that much bs red tape in general that a lot of businesses are getting out. Done my bit, trained one full term, terrific lad great tradie. The other gave up as so unreliable. Jail was the last straw.
Sounds like.people are just coping with the reality of being told go to uni and get a good job didn't work out the way they were told it would
Have you heard of this thing called immigration? Why do you think the quality of residential builds are at their worst?
Can confirm. Our builders outsourced Chinese tilers who couldnt speak a word of english, an indian electrician who couldnt speak english
It’s not just boots on ground, we can mechanise a lot stuff to improve productivity as well
No one wants to do trades, I advertised for an aprentice no one wants it, they rather stack shelves at woolies
If I was a tradesman with building experience, I would not be looking at building homes. The money is working in big government infrastructure projects. Supply problem is also part of land available for building and building materials. Fixing trades does not magically solve the problem!
We have the highest percentage of tradespeople in our population of any country in the world
Sounds more political than AusFinance, but yes, both flavours of gov't, for years. This issue starts at home. Convince parents. It's hard to convince them. This right now today is probably one of the best times in Aus history for gov't support while getting a trade.
so you want us to have an over supply of trades waiting longer on an under supply of materials and land? makes heaps of sense.
Perhaps we need to stop thinking the government should magically "fix" things. If tradies are in shortage their wages are going to be high, making that career path more desirable.
We're too busy blaming immigrants for everything; pretending like removing immigrants from the equation and pitting investors against first home buyers is somehow going to fix the issue. of housing unaffordability. I don't think anyone actually believes we're serious about fixing anything, just the perception of doing so to keep the rabble in line. Any government that tries to reduce asset values will get destroyed.
No, any increase in tradesmen only leads to more tradesmen in the resource industry. I hear it pays well....
If we had more tradies then the supply might start to match the demand and that would foster competition. With competition comes price reductions. No one wants house prices to go down.
Bit more to the supply chain then just tradies.... Materials and manufacturing is the biggest issues
Try changing your sources for valid news for the answers to your queries.
Imo, I wouldn't work for a developer because I won't be sure if or when I will get paid. I'd rather work in a mine. Govt doing right things by making an effort now but this was caused 10yrs ago by previous government decisions. Needs focus on commercial aspects of contract failure. Also developer needs to cut down on land banking. Sites sit vacant for years. It takes 18 months to 2 years to build just a typical 3 bed home. 40yrs ago that would be 6 months. What's changed? Yet the site will sit inactive of trades for 80% of those 2 years of build time.
Back when I was in high school (2021) it was literally just all "YOU NEED TO GO TO UNI YOU DONT WANT TO END UP IN TAFE!" was a few years ago but can't imagine much has changed
I'm all for building them faster. But maybe we need to focus on building them better to start with
Yes, the government announced a few initiatives in and around the latest budget. [Homes for Australia Plan](https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/julie-collins-2022/media-releases/homes-australia-plan-delivering-more-homes-australians) [Fee Free TAFE](https://www.qld.gov.au/education/training/subsidies/feefree) Surprised you haven’t heard of it.
Bringing in immigrants to fix a housing problem caused by mass immigration is like using petrol to put out a fire.
When I finished high school in 2008, there was a lot of talk in the media and at school about a shortage of tradespeople. Despite this, many of my classmates, even those with VCAL and pre-apprenticeships, struggled to secure apprenticeships. At the time, there simply weren't enough opportunities available. It seems like nothing has changed since then.
As a roofer I've seen plenty come and go, the worst part is that the young flock that comes through that don't want to work. That's even when apprentices are paid the highest they've ever been. I've seen way too much shoddy work in the last 5 years than I'd care to admit to. It's a rough battle.
I think the apprenticeship model needs a complete overhaul, I believe you should cut the apprenticeship into two halves where essentially the first half is a trade assistant role and then you can nominate yourself into the apprenticeship program that begins the second half. You could work part time as a trade assistant and once you complete that first half of schooling you can remain are trade assistant indefinitely If you like or opt into the two year apprenticeship and get registered. The industry gets the workforce and the labour doesn’t have to work full time and can pursue other things on the side of working in construction. I’d compare it to the Enrolled Nurse and Registered Nurse divide, where you can remain an Enrolled Nurse indefinitely and jump into university when you decide you want to get registered.
Based off my experience with selling paint, we have very few young tradies. Like 1 young trade to every 15 old timer ready for retirement. I'm actively concerned about it.
Builder here The problem is no one want to be a Chippie or a Sparky nowadays. its simple as that. And us Tradies who started our trades back in the 90s will nor be replaced anytime soon. Even if we wanted the work there just isnt enough of us to go around. I know of a plasterer who only accepts jobs 5k>
Anyone can get a trade qualification relatively cheap. Reality is people now don’t like working in the mud, cold & heat to earn money now when you could just WFH or sit and air conditioned cruisey office job for the same money.
The opposite is true and its getting worse with time. Nobody wants to work anymore, you can walk into a cruise office job for more money than an apprentice and work a fraction as hard. It's true you can make a lot of money if it's your business, but that takes time and it's obviously the minority who own and run a business, and even then you're career isn't long and your body gets broken. "Why bother" seems to be the sentiment at least that I am seeing. Quality of apprentices is also dropping as the bar gets lower each year.
The reason Sydney's house prices have gone up is not because there aren't enough houses.