Why Labor’s goal of having more tradies is looking hollow with funding expected to fall

Labor’s talk of boosting the supply of tradies is looking hollow with Commonwealth and State funding for apprenticeships projected to fall during the next four decades despite the need for more manual workers as the population ages and AI threatens white collar jobs.

Treasury’s Intergenerational Report released this week forecast the proportion of the working age population, aged 25 to 64, with a Certificate III or IV qualification would increase to 37 per cent by 2065-66, up from 28 per cent now.

This is despite trade occupations being overwhelmingly dominated by men, with women making up less than one per cent of plumbers and plasterers.

The Grattan Institute questioned how more Australians would be doing a trade in 40 years, given the plateauing enrolments in trade training.

“This is unlikely to happen without a change in trajectory. At the moment, Australia’s enrolments in vocational education and training are actually declining,” their report by Lizzie Knight and Ben Jefferson said.

The 352-page Intergenerational report also forecast that per capita funding for the family tax benefit, which funds employer assistance for apprenticeships, is forecast to plunge by 39.5 per cent in real terms adjusted for inflation from $638 to $386.

The Grattan Institute think tank seized on this projection to predict an overall 15 per cent fall in Federal vocational education and training payments by 2066, despite the Commonwealth funding for free TAFE courses.

“This suggests there will be a 15 per cent reduction in the number of people taking these courses, or a 15 per cent average funding decrease per student, or a combination of both,” it said.

TAFE courses, mainly funded by State governments, provide the bulk of trade training in Australia for those wanting to become plumbers, carpenters and electricians.

“The Intergenerational Report is a Federal government report, and vocational education and training is largely a State-based policy responsibility,” the Grattan Institute said.

“But without further insights available, we have to assume the average funding per person in vocational education is going to decrease and the number of people going to the sector will go down.”

Andrew Norton, a professor of higher education at Monash University, said fluctuating funding from different levels of government could hinder the Commonwealth’s goal of having significantly more people from a wide range of age groups enrol in a trade training course.

“There are funding issues obstructing that and there are also issues about whether there will be sufficient demand from the Australian population to do it,” he told The Nightly.

“Vocational education tends to be up and down: it’s going up for the teenage group but overall, it’s not increasing.”

Higher building costs and interest rates are also a potential threat to future apprenticeships, given construction companies are more likely to become insolvent.

“It will continue to be a cyclical industry, up and down, always has been, and that will affect apprenticeships as well,” Professor Norton said.

While trades jobs are regarded as more AI-proof than many university degrees, practical jobs were likely to still be overwhelmingly male dominated in coming decades, as more women went to university.

“Guys who sort of don’t do so fantastically at school, those kind of male trades are probably much better options than degrees,” Professor Norton said.

“The women who go into these trades often don’t last; it’s a very blokey environment and so they are probably better off still doing degrees on the whole.”

The proportion of women in trade jobs is still in the low single digits with just 79 female bricklayers in the 2023-24 financial year, making up just one per cent of the 8066 workers mixing mortar, Australian Taxation Office data showed.

The 212 women working as general plumbers made up just 0.6 per cent of the 38,027-strong workforce installing pipes.

Just 164 women worked as plasterers, comprising 1.6 per cent of the 10,548 tradies putting up interior walls.

During the next four decades, Treasury is expecting the proportion of the working age population with a degree to increase from 40 per cent to 47 per cent.

Per capita education funding is expected to increase by 6.4 per cent from $1767 to $1879.

The Grattan Institute forecast that higher education payments would increase by 43 per cent over the next 40 years, including payments for student subsidies like Commonwealth supported places, as well as research funding via the Australian Research Council.

The Universities Accord in 2024 recommended that by 2050, 80 per cent of the Australian population would have a Certificate III qualification or above, which would also include Certificate IV qualifications and university degrees.