Why Australia’s tradie shortage is getting worse
A worsening shortage of trades workers is holding back progress on priorities like the housing crisis, with experts warning many thousands more apprentices are needed.

SA is facing a tougher struggle to find trades people than other states. Photo: PA/Alamy Ian Nicholson
New research published by the Master Builders Association has forecast a shortage of 130,000 workers across the building and construction industry alone this year, excluding attrition rates.
Master Builders CEO Denita Wawn said the shortfall is so bad that it threatens to worsen the housing crisis and bottleneck other urgent infrastructure priorities across health and education.
“One of the biggest handbrakes on building homes, our roads, our hospitals, our schools at the moment is a shortage of workers,” Wawn said.
“There’s about 1.4 million workers in our sector; we need well over 1.5 to be able to actually do what we need to do to resolve the housing crisis.”
The findings about trades workers in building and construction come just weeks after separate analysis from think tank Per Capita outlined a massive shortage of electricians and apprentices.
That report found federal government efforts to rapidly deploy renewable energy into the power grid to lower emissions were being threatened by a lack of skills and labour across the industry.
Per Capita executive director Emma Dawson said research across the economy is showing that worsening shortages of workers have become a key hurdle for navigating our national priorities.
“We have skill gaps across the economy, particularly in these essential trades,” she said.
Barriers stymie apprentices and women
The upsides of learning a trade have traditionally been seen as an ability to learn on the job and not incur large student loans, with the allure of a stable income as a qualified tradie at the end.
But Dawson explained there are serious barriers for apprentices trying to finish their training, including low rates of pay and the quality of training available in the tertiary education system.
“We’ve underinvested in vocational training for the best part of 20 years,” Dawson explained.
Just 54 per cent of people completed their four-year apprenticeships in 2023, which was down 1 percentage point on 2018, according to federal government figures published in September.
Another key problem that has been identified in the research of Per Capita and Master Builders is that trades industries are male dominated, which reinforces itself and limits the labour pool.
Although the female share of employed people has risen from 39 per cent in 1986 to 48 per cent in 2024, just 13.6 per cent of building and construction industry workers were female in May 2024.

Source: Master Builders
Among electricians the figure is even lower at less than 10 per cent, despite growing demand.
Master Builders said that industry must become more inclusive and that more funding is needed for programs actively encouraging women to learn trades as an alternative to higher education.
Dawson said the long and inflexible hours in tradie jobs is difficult for many women to navigate, particularly for mothers and others with caring responsibilities.
“Traditionally some of the blue-collar unions have had enterprise agreements that require a 50-hour week,” Dawson said.
“That doesn’t work for women.”
More broadly, boosting apprenticeship completion rates will be necessary alongside a short-term need for migrant workers to fill immediate skills gaps.

Source: Per Capita’s Centre for New Industry, NCVER.
Master Builders wants the government to publish a national apprenticeship strategy that backs wage subsidies throughout training, as well as other subsidies for accommodation and TAFEs.
Dawson explained that businesses and governments needed to step up and ensure apprentices are paid a living wage and have access to quality education providing on-the-job opportunities.
“We know TAFE courses have a better outcome than private VET colleges,” Dawson said.
“Registered training organisations that involve the industry, whether through relevant unions or more broadly, are more successful in seeing apprentices complete their training.”
Per Capita has previously suggested governments attach conditions to the billions of dollars in public funds flowing into renewable energy projects that ensure apprentices are treated well.
Dawson said that recommendation extends to federal funding for housing projects.
“We need standards for the minimum number of apprentices [and] standards about how they’re mentored,” Dawson said.