Every Australian should be able to afford to live in their own home but housing is in crisis as Australian builders face worsening skills shortages and a wave of insolvencies.
In the face of these challenges Labor is making it harder for Australians by overseeing a record surge in migration without a proper plan on housing and failing to respond to the worsening skills shortages across the economy.
The Albanese Government’s housing crisis is hurting Australians, and it is going to get worse. The data makes clear that fewer Australians are taking up the skills needed to build houses to meet demand today and into the future.
According to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Australia saw the number of apprentices taking up a trade in the Construction Trades Worker segment drop by 22 per cent in Labor’s first year in office. This compares with the former Coalition Government which increased numbers by 59 per cent over its final term from 19,360 to 30,845.
The Government’s own body BuildSkills Australia, the national Jobs and Skills Council for the construction sector, has conceded Australia needs to find an extra 90,000 skilled tradespeople in the next three months to meet Labor’s housing targets and that our construction industry faces a 40 per cent workforce shortfall by 2040.
This latest workforce warning from Australian industry follows leading Australian business organisations Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) raising their concerns about the state of Australian skills directly with Treasurer Jim Chalmers and seniors ministers Katy Gallagher, Chris Bowen, Julie Collins, Catherine King and Brendan O’Connor.
A proper plan on migration is only part of the answer. Australia must skill our next generation of workers to meet these demands. But despite promising to solve workforce shortages, the Albanese Labor Government has made them worse.
There are now over 50,000 less apprentices and trainees in-training today than when Labor took office. Commencements have dropped by 40 per cent, with 110,000 less Australians enrolling in a new qualification, taking up a trade or a training course. Female commencements are worse still, dropping by 45 per cent. Commencements for new trade apprentices has dropped by almost a third with 28 per cent fewer over Labor’s first year alone.
It has also been found that there were 50,000 fewer students taking up government funded vocational education and training courses in 2023 under Labor than in 2021 under the Liberals. Fee Free TAFE is not making an impact.
This means there are less Australian workers to deal with Labor’s record high migration and record low home building. As migration surges under Labor, first-home buyers are at their lowest levels in over a decade, building approvals are at 20-year lows and rents are up by 26 per cent since Labor came to office. Labor’s collapse in apprentices and trainees will make this worse.
The contrast could not be clearer. Trade apprentices in-training hit record highs in the final months of the Coalition Government and as of June 2022, there were 429,000 apprentices and trainees in-training, 25 per cent more than at the same time in 2021. Under Labor this number has fallen to 377,715, a loss of one in ten.
Labor’s housing crisis is already hurting Australians but with collapsing apprentice numbers and surging migration the impact of these failures is only just the beginning.