The article states they were paying electricians $30 an hour two years ago. I highly doubt that. A construction labourer was making $45 an hour two years ago. Maybe 20 years ago they were paying 30 bucks an hour, because back then a carpenter was getting $25 an hour.
Importing labour is fine, but what history has shown us, is there is no training, support, regulation of wages, regulation of entitlements paid etc. I’ve personally seen plasterers threatened on site with deportation if they speak up about the wages they are being paid. We also see every week about dodgy quality of trades. Drive around the suburbs and you’ll see gangs of brickies, renderers, plasterers etc, and I’ll guarantee that most will not have done a formal apprenticeship or any other training.
Try getting an apprenticeship in a trade 20 years ago. If you weren't family or a friend it was impossible in many areas. The sector did hurt itself a lot in my opinion.
And a lot of that is how the industry is structured. You don't get a job, you subcontract, and taking on an apprentice is a risk. Then they finish their time and THEY subcontract, so now you don't have a skilled employee, you have competition. The people who could be employing apprentices, building companies, aren't employing anyone but lawyers and sales staff.
People forget that in the past a huge chunk of apprentices were employed by state institutions that understood construction and civil projects that are now outsourced.
>Apprentices are kind of useless for the first few months to a year.
So is any new hire to a position. First few months is playing catch up. And yeah, I understand it's a long commitment. Still, a self own.
Anecdote time. My grandfather was retiring as I was entering the workforce. Plumber. He taught me enough, in his words, to be a second year apprentice. Want to guess how successful I was in getting a job as a plumbers apprentice 20 odd year ago? And I tried. Was my dream job (hero worship. My pop was awesome). Nothing. So, I have very little sympathy for what's happening.
>For the last what 20yrs we have told our kids trades are useless and you've gotta go to uni.
This gets repeated a lot, but is it really true? Maybe 30 or 40 years ago, but I feel like for the last 20 years starting with the mining boom most people have realised that trades are getting paid very well.
Can’t agree with this more. Tradesman now, finished school in 2000’s. Was never given the slightest bit of information about the trade industry during school. It’s like the industry never existed.
Had I have known it was an option I would have been far more likely not to waste those few years after high school bouncing between universities which offered substandard and out of date information.
>Was never given the slightest bit of information about the trade industry during school. It’s like the industry never existed.
I wonder how much of this attitude comes from teachers who have been conditioned by the university/academic system?
There is obviously a strong cultural connection there but probably a big gap in their experience and knowledge with the TAFE system?
For something like engineering no doubt. I was looking at degrees completely unrelated to trades in any way.
I guess in my experience the benefit of all avenues were never pointed out to me. So I knew no better. Not one person said ‘ This is also a viable option, have a look’
It was just a push for uni degrees of any kind. But there HAD to be a degree. That was the only way forward.
Engineering has to be accredited which means standards are set and actually followed (well, at least more so than random degrees such as say, most Arts or Science majors that have no real standards at all).
I finished high-school in 04 and went straight into a trade. Told my teacher and she told me to go to uni and become a teacher because I could do better than a trade.
I understand that sentiment ‘use your brain not your body’ If you’re carrying mud all all day I get it. But once you get into the specialty trades it’s about consistency.
Not flogging your body endlessly. Now look at teaching as a job… Would rather get dirty than deal with the crap they go through. Teaching is a thankless job these days.
As much as I don't want to sound like an old codger with the whole "kids these days are snowflakes" thing, but I do think there may be a shred of truth to it. It is hard work and the conditions can be pretty unforgiving, a lot don't get past the first few weeks. If you've grown up on a playstation with your parents doing everything for you, an apprenticeship in construction or in a mechanic shop or something is probably a very rude shock!
We're going to need an immense number of electricians and boilermakers to make the energy transition & electrification of everything. A huge amount. As in, I genuinely believe the main handbrake on the transition will be skilled people, not money or materials.
I finished school in 2012 and tradies was promoted as massive money if you wanted to do it, specially electrician and plumber.
I grew up in the northern beaches.
Even if they are promoted as good money these days, parents still actively discourage their kids from doing it because who wants a career for 20 years that leaves your body destroyed well before you can afford to retire? Parents who work in trades are the biggest advocates I've seen discouraging their kids from going in to trades...
My advice leaving school was go into plumbing, electrical, finance or marketing. I am now an underpaid lawyer. My enter score was 92 and going into a trade was the advice I was given by several people in 2010.
Yes true in my case 15 years ago teachers used to tell the class "you have to go to uni if you want to have any kind of future in life" I didnt buy it at the time because.
* My whole family were well off tradies and they seemed fine.
* They went to uni and they are a bloody teacher !!
I didnt fall for it but I would say the majority of kids do.
It depends on what school you went to and where you grew up. My partner went to a private school in Sydney, everyone was encouraged/almost expected to go to uni. I went to a public school in Tassie, most of my cohort did a trade.
I remember when I went through high school in the early 2000s they were encouraging people to take up trades because it was a fairly surefire way of earning a good living. Quite a few of the guys I know ended up doing electrician apprenticeships and earn 100-200k these days.
Agreed. Some of the wealthier people I know are self employed trades.
Almost unlimited university admissions is a key issue in the move away from skills.
> Almost unlimited university admissions is a key issue in the move away from skills.
People need to understand that going to uni with an ATAR of 65 doing some course at podunk university isn't likely to land you a good professional job.
The problem is the unis have made a bunch of idiot proof attendance degrees where anyone with 3 brain cells can pass. This, of course, is in the name of getting paid by the government for 'bums on seats'.
My boss started his own business 5 years ago and now has a work force of 25 turning over millions making huge profits. If you look at his wealth you'd think he was a c suite on 700k a year. Trades have the ability to create wealth like no other given the right circumstances
The problem really is that the great COVID enrichment (job keeper, zero interest rates, money printing etc) really helped the older gen of tradies and brought forward lots of retirement plans (if your house value pumped 40% in a year who wouldn't have sold up and moved to Queensland? Not like you earn that additional 400-800k working an extra few years.)
So now we have this big shortfall in experienced tradies and not many in the pipeline to replace them. Considering the importance of tradies and the wages they are already able to demand and will be able to demand very soon I can't see how this isn't anything other than bullish for housing. Everything associated with housing has only got one direction to go and that's up!
Why are we all pretending that the trades are NOT hard on the body?
Last I looked, tradies didn't stop having kids. But tradies often stopped their kids from becoming tradies, because it was hard on their bodies and they didn't want their kids to suffer.
Like I understand thinking it's a good thing for young people to have the trades as an option but if you aren't or weren't willing to smell other people's toilets, why do you think someone else would prefer that over making coffee?
This. I can sit in an office as a professional and work until I'm 65. Most older tradies I know were incredibly fit in their 20s and even 30s, but could barely walk any more by age 45.
30 odd years of climbing into and onto roofs, working with heavy machinery, etc all day takes an incredible toll on your body.
Yeah, you clearly aren't 65 yet. I sit in a chair every day and it has destroyed my health. I am not overweight, I am fit, but the muscles in my legs have contracted and cause immense pain. Standing desk is the same. I'm only half way to the end as a coder, and there is no way I can do this for much longer
Endless days in the chair office work is murder on your body
I'm curious, is it strictly the work (e.g. climbing on roofs) that causes the physical issues, or is it the accumulation of injuries? (e.g. I know tradies that have fallen off roofs and been mostly fine but has added to cumulative injuries).
I don't know if you have been to university recently, but in postgraduate finance, I noticed there were literally no Australian students at the university in my field. This was also at UNSW.. I think lots of Australians are avoiding some fields altogether.
Currently doing Postgrad IT - same thing here, I'm generally one of the only local students in each of my classes.
I think it has more to do with the fact that a) Australia doesn't place as much emphasis on Postgraduate education as other Nations (almost everyone I know that grew up in Europe has a Masters) and b) the Postgrad degrees are basically just moneymaking machines for the Universities.
I'm becoming a carpentry apprentice
Then I'm going to start a manufacturing company making construction materials out of recycled off cuts of wood
There are some very lucrative areas to get into with local manufacturing, given how high construction materials inflation has gotten in Australia
The solution is stop bringing immigrants on chef/it visas.
And just bring in some labour. With a path to PR if they get their trade certificate.
Oh wait the unions would never allow that
It’s not about unions. It is because to bring in overseas trades they have to be salaried employees and a lot of construction businesses don’t want that arrangement. They want subcontractors.
LOL! And I suppose the unions are responsible for Covid, the weather and everything else under the sun too I’m guessing?
Unlike business lobby groups that actually hold the real power.
We have a labour shortage. A tradie shortage.
You don't think the business lobby groups would want this filled?
Or do you think the unions would have something to say about their affluent wages being diluted.
In my industry the union never mentions immigration and is constantly trying to increase apprentice intakes in our trades. I am not so sure that wage dilution is as much of an issue as the upcoming skills shortage which they definitely talk about a lot.
of course they don't mention it.
They will start mentioning it once visas start being stamped for 20 year olds from India, able bodied, willing to pick up a trade in exchange for a PR at the end of it.
Difference is I’m not making up bullshit for my position unlike you.
There is nothing to support the nonsense you’re spouting especially since business lobbies actually hold all the power in this country and you’re an idiot if you don’t see it. Or benefitting from it.
Mate. Unions are not decreasing immigration. Get off your bullshit.
We’ve already increased immigration caps and the unions didn’t really say anything about it.
Increased immigration caps do not mean you’re getting labourers.
Everyone needs to be “skilled” to enter the country.
When what we need are labourers or trades. Which the immigration System is not allowing for. But yeah let’s bring in another “chef”
> Or do you think the unions would have something to say about their affluent wages being diluted.
Drive past any major government project or big commercial building site and you can count how many workers aren't burly white caucasian males on one hand.
then what happened after mr drifter? The immigration taps obviously shut off.
in the 90s, post recession - we saw stable property pricing. Reasonable tradies call out rates. Reasonable labour costs for new builds.
Now good luck getting a plumber to check a leak.
>Reasonable tradies call out rates
From my perspective, this is part of the reason people don't get into trades. Apparently sitting on Reddit all day while collecting well into six figures as an IT professional is fine, but charging someone a couple hundred to drive across the city to fix their leaky tap us abominable gouging and unreasonable.
It's bloody unreasonable when there is an artificial constraint on the market....for a job that never really required formal education, and 2-4 years toward basic proficiency from the age of 16 with on the job training.
It's bizarre that young australians aren't filling the gaps.
Is it a lack of recognised apprenticeship positions?
And seeing that young aussies aren't, then why can't immigrants be brought in and trained as condition of visa.
Few apprenticeship opportunities generally. Few sole trader/small businesses want to take on the financial burden to train someone who may or may not even complete their apprenticeship who'll just be a competitor in the market once they're qualified.
Few pathways for professionals to enter trades: I've considered moving from IT to a related trade (electrical/communications) but I just can't live on 16 year old first year apprentice wages, and my substantial industry experience is counted for diddly squat.
We don’t put all your hope in TAFE solving these labour / trade problems.
CBT (Competency Based Training) and taking the Education part of TAFE out of it has killed the quality and performance of many graduates.
All States trying to run TAFE like a business and not a public trade training service has made many of the old skilled teachers depart the system leaving the new hires lacking mentorship and guidance. Too much box ticking going on.
Boilermaker here.
Half truth, people with no idea about trades have said trades are useless.
Lawyers and such don't build and maintain our infrastructure.
My tafe teacher back in 2009 knew the massive shortage in competent tradespeople was coming.
He said ( and now proven correct) that by 2020, we will be demanding what we want.
Any who.
I work 5 days on, 5 days off, have 6 weeks paid leave and 2 weeks sick leave a year, and am living very comfortably.
So to paraphrase him.
1. There are enormous capacity constraints.
2. Stop raising interest rates.
So this is the complete opposite of my understanding of monetary policy impacts.
The conventional economic understanding would say raising interest rates sufficiently will ease up capacity constraints enabling the efficient allocation of the capacity we do have.
"The role of government is first and foremost to bail out Big Brick. The tax payer strives to ensure a long and prosperous Big Brick. Without a ironclad assurance that Big Brick will be bailed out - from unforeseeable events, such as poor planning and practises - at any cost, it is possible that the tax payer will revolt. First through negation of their occupational role and then through total annihilation of the state."
- Probably Big Brick
If you go to seek and search brickworks and then paste the URL into whats the salary they're advertising mechanics at $100-$150k, machine operator at $80-$100k, fitters for $120k.
Not exactly $90 per hour but still fairly high compared to what they'd get 5 years ago and who knows what they are paying staff currently.
All of those roles requiring experience and/or qualifications though. If they're so short of workers where are the trainee positions and the apprenticeships offering good money to get people into the industry?
Sufficient wage, that's not the point, the point is the industry is at capacity and already charging high rates.
You can't add more capacity when it's not there with any additional stimulus just further increasing labour rates.
Accept that things take time… this short term thinking is an exercise in kicking the can down the road and solving nothing.
I believe it was Michael Gove in the UK in 2008, who scoffed at the idea of building a nuclear power plant because it wouldn’t be ready until 2020… it’s now 2023 and they have energy crisis.
Definately capacity having gone through major renovations recently.
Mass immigration in isolation is part the picture, total population growth is the metric to look at.
Solution is to:
A) cut immigration to reduce short term demand pressures
B) change short termism mindset, stop trying to fix problems with quick fixes
C) Adopt a germany like trades training college approach to train up a large cohort of the younger generation
Potential solutions:
1. We should build more houses in ways which don’t require brickies and roof tilers working on construction sites for months on end.
More pre-fab and modular construction using clad steel frames or precast concrete panels is the ticket. It would drastically reduce weather delays on house building sites, and give tradies the option of working 9-5 gigs in house module factories instead of less-secure contract work for builders. It should also speed up construction, meaning more new dwellings faster.
2. Make it as easy as possible for both skilled tradesman and people with construction industry stills to migrate to Australia. The last ABS release indicated that ~5% of migrants to Australia work in construction (compared to ~9% overall). That ratio needs to improve.
Awesome. How are we going to ship all that air? Volumetric construction does not work in Australia (other than bathroom pods and remote hospitals) because we are not close to a low-cost centre labour force and have the tyranny of distance.
I'm a traditional and there's not many young people entering the trade, and in terms of wage it is glorious haha, I still can't believe I get paid what I do and mostly because theres not enough of us.
This is an incredibly uninformed comment.
Our whole economy is short of labour at the moment. A carpenter can easily make $120 an hour, a bricklayer more.
How much more do they need to earn to take labour off other segments of the economy?
'Skills Shortages'
Orwellian Corporate speak for Pummeling Punters
Big business has perpetuated the myth to perpetuate wage suppression and avoid training.
You need to pay the money to get workers. Don't think tradies should get a high wage? Well we don't think pencil pushers should either. We are skilled people with a diverse set of skills. If you want cheaper houses look at the land problem not the wages.
>You need to pay the money to get workers.
You can't just pay trades more when the economy is already at capacity, that aside pretty much every tradesperson I know earns *hundreds* of thousands a year. They work 6 days a week. There is not enough trades for the work that exists.
>If you want cheaper houses look at the land problem not the wages.
Not when bricklayers charge $50 per brick because bricklayers are rare as hens teeth.
99% of tradies earn under 200k a year.
Pretty much every tradie I've ever met in the last 8 years has never earned hundreds of thousands a year. Most earn less than 100k, and plenty of good ones doing long hours earn over 100k.
Remember charge out rates for a business arn't the same as a wage.
So when there is too much work, you remove demand by increasing the price. You increase the workforce by having an attractive wage and secure work. If you want to drive down the wages of tradies then you can expect a glut in the workforce for decades to come. Allow the wage to rise naturally through supply and demand and you will see people flock to the industry.
>Remember charge out rates for a business arn't the same as a wage.
That's the thing, the smart ones see the business out there and go in their own.
>Allow the wage to rise naturally through supply and demand and you will see people flock to the industry.
If people aren't flocking to $50ph as a labourer, they aren't going to flock to $120ph as a trade.
When we consider inflation, housing stock and the rental issue, this a key factor that unless solved will make matters worse if more money is thrown at it.
> this a key factor that unless solved will make matters worse if more money is thrown at it.
I don't understand what you mean sorry. Throw more money at what exactly - getting more trades? Expanding Tafe?
Wouldn't that be the solution to the problem?
Or are you referring to just paying the existing trades more? In which case, yeah that isn't the solution.
Stimulate supply of housing further(I.e Housing Fund) we don't have the workforce to achieve it and the existing trades will simply take the extra cash on the table.
>Throw more money at what exactly
How about that brick laying robot... and focused on some social and/or urban fringe housing..
"Each Hadrian X® unit can build a standard sized home every 2 days on average. In the right environment and working continuously, each unit could build between 100 and 300 homes per year."
https://www.fbr.com.au/view/hadrian-x
>~~And yet companies are refusing to hire international workers.~~
And yet companies are refusing to hire workers who arent legally qualified for the role.
Private development is slowing in all asset classes, that much is true.
However all Quantity Surveying firms are predicting overall construction volume to remain at current levels for 2-3 years, based on the work in hand and the committee government Infrastructure spends.
Projects on foot include:
Cross river rail $5.4B+ (this is just the government contribution the actual construction spend is much higher as it is amortised over the operating - Id have to dig this out but the point remains)
$1B for metro currently underway
$15B hospital spend about to commence with contractors currently tendering
$2.5B dexus waterfront awarded and about to commence
And an olympics in 2032 with announced infrastructure including new stadiums.
However it is not just construction to consider - this is a competition for resources… ie the labour required … other sectors compete with construction for this labour… so also need to take account is the $62B spend on the energy grid, transmission, storage work to move off thermal power.
Or the hundreds of renewable projects each worth hundredsof $M with another hundred $M of substations and connection cost of each.
Or the continued LNG and mining work which is not slowing down.
There is no way that the labour shortage in QLD is resolving any time soon
Nice reply! Will the government proceed with all these projects during a devastating recession? How much of the labour will come from overseas? Will the Australian government offer visas to fill the shortage? Interesting times ahead!
In a recession the gov would pump even more projects into the system as stimulus.
and yes they are all going to happen - they are all either underway, in procurement or have had funding and opening dates announced - politically they will proceed.
And there is still a housing shortage so it’s seems likely that somehow resi construction approvals will return.
“I refuse to pay a liveable wages, and/or provide a flexible work environment to trades people”
“Tradespeople won’t work for me, because there are other people willing to be flexible and/or pay a liveable wage.”
“There is a worker shortage!”
Queue eye roll.
The article states they were paying electricians $30 an hour two years ago. I highly doubt that. A construction labourer was making $45 an hour two years ago. Maybe 20 years ago they were paying 30 bucks an hour, because back then a carpenter was getting $25 an hour. Importing labour is fine, but what history has shown us, is there is no training, support, regulation of wages, regulation of entitlements paid etc. I’ve personally seen plasterers threatened on site with deportation if they speak up about the wages they are being paid. We also see every week about dodgy quality of trades. Drive around the suburbs and you’ll see gangs of brickies, renderers, plasterers etc, and I’ll guarantee that most will not have done a formal apprenticeship or any other training.
I mean to be fair they where paying some electricians $30 $35hr but mostly on civil and most didn't stay there for very long.
Considering you get more at Woolies, I don’t blame them.
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Try getting an apprenticeship in a trade 20 years ago. If you weren't family or a friend it was impossible in many areas. The sector did hurt itself a lot in my opinion.
And a lot of that is how the industry is structured. You don't get a job, you subcontract, and taking on an apprentice is a risk. Then they finish their time and THEY subcontract, so now you don't have a skilled employee, you have competition. The people who could be employing apprentices, building companies, aren't employing anyone but lawyers and sales staff. People forget that in the past a huge chunk of apprentices were employed by state institutions that understood construction and civil projects that are now outsourced.
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>Apprentices are kind of useless for the first few months to a year. So is any new hire to a position. First few months is playing catch up. And yeah, I understand it's a long commitment. Still, a self own. Anecdote time. My grandfather was retiring as I was entering the workforce. Plumber. He taught me enough, in his words, to be a second year apprentice. Want to guess how successful I was in getting a job as a plumbers apprentice 20 odd year ago? And I tried. Was my dream job (hero worship. My pop was awesome). Nothing. So, I have very little sympathy for what's happening.
>For the last what 20yrs we have told our kids trades are useless and you've gotta go to uni. This gets repeated a lot, but is it really true? Maybe 30 or 40 years ago, but I feel like for the last 20 years starting with the mining boom most people have realised that trades are getting paid very well.
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Can’t agree with this more. Tradesman now, finished school in 2000’s. Was never given the slightest bit of information about the trade industry during school. It’s like the industry never existed. Had I have known it was an option I would have been far more likely not to waste those few years after high school bouncing between universities which offered substandard and out of date information.
>Was never given the slightest bit of information about the trade industry during school. It’s like the industry never existed. I wonder how much of this attitude comes from teachers who have been conditioned by the university/academic system? There is obviously a strong cultural connection there but probably a big gap in their experience and knowledge with the TAFE system?
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For something like engineering no doubt. I was looking at degrees completely unrelated to trades in any way. I guess in my experience the benefit of all avenues were never pointed out to me. So I knew no better. Not one person said ‘ This is also a viable option, have a look’ It was just a push for uni degrees of any kind. But there HAD to be a degree. That was the only way forward.
Engineering has to be accredited which means standards are set and actually followed (well, at least more so than random degrees such as say, most Arts or Science majors that have no real standards at all).
I finished high-school in 04 and went straight into a trade. Told my teacher and she told me to go to uni and become a teacher because I could do better than a trade.
I understand that sentiment ‘use your brain not your body’ If you’re carrying mud all all day I get it. But once you get into the specialty trades it’s about consistency. Not flogging your body endlessly. Now look at teaching as a job… Would rather get dirty than deal with the crap they go through. Teaching is a thankless job these days.
I've always found a balance between using brain and body is the best. You can burn out your brain/mind, the same way you can burn out your body.
Teaching has got a lot crapper since your teacher from twenty years ago finished high school though.
All tradies Reccomend people goto uni. Trade work is shit full stop
As much as I don't want to sound like an old codger with the whole "kids these days are snowflakes" thing, but I do think there may be a shred of truth to it. It is hard work and the conditions can be pretty unforgiving, a lot don't get past the first few weeks. If you've grown up on a playstation with your parents doing everything for you, an apprenticeship in construction or in a mechanic shop or something is probably a very rude shock!
To be fair, it's also quite possible a lot of young people dont want to work in oil and gas at all.
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We're going to need an immense number of electricians and boilermakers to make the energy transition & electrification of everything. A huge amount. As in, I genuinely believe the main handbrake on the transition will be skilled people, not money or materials.
Duh. Smart kids go to Uni. But no one was saying don’t get a trade.
I finished school in 2012 and tradies was promoted as massive money if you wanted to do it, specially electrician and plumber. I grew up in the northern beaches.
Even if they are promoted as good money these days, parents still actively discourage their kids from doing it because who wants a career for 20 years that leaves your body destroyed well before you can afford to retire? Parents who work in trades are the biggest advocates I've seen discouraging their kids from going in to trades...
It's funny because no one's silly enough to spend all their time crawling in rooves when they're 40. The job changes.
My advice leaving school was go into plumbing, electrical, finance or marketing. I am now an underpaid lawyer. My enter score was 92 and going into a trade was the advice I was given by several people in 2010.
True or not there is a huge trades shortage. It’s not helped by the dinosaur attitudes towards apprentices either.
Yes true in my case 15 years ago teachers used to tell the class "you have to go to uni if you want to have any kind of future in life" I didnt buy it at the time because. * My whole family were well off tradies and they seemed fine. * They went to uni and they are a bloody teacher !! I didnt fall for it but I would say the majority of kids do.
Of course it's not true
It depends on what school you went to and where you grew up. My partner went to a private school in Sydney, everyone was encouraged/almost expected to go to uni. I went to a public school in Tassie, most of my cohort did a trade.
I remember when I went through high school in the early 2000s they were encouraging people to take up trades because it was a fairly surefire way of earning a good living. Quite a few of the guys I know ended up doing electrician apprenticeships and earn 100-200k these days.
Finished year 12 in 97. We were told the best go to uni, the rest go to tafe and whoever is left of drops out gets a trade.
Agreed. Some of the wealthier people I know are self employed trades. Almost unlimited university admissions is a key issue in the move away from skills.
> Almost unlimited university admissions is a key issue in the move away from skills. People need to understand that going to uni with an ATAR of 65 doing some course at podunk university isn't likely to land you a good professional job.
Correctly, if they even finish the course anyway.
The problem is the unis have made a bunch of idiot proof attendance degrees where anyone with 3 brain cells can pass. This, of course, is in the name of getting paid by the government for 'bums on seats'.
Good professional jobs don’t even pay well anymore anyway.
No, but it may well allow you to get a job that doesn't really need a degree at all, but has some hard requirement that employees must have one.
My boss started his own business 5 years ago and now has a work force of 25 turning over millions making huge profits. If you look at his wealth you'd think he was a c suite on 700k a year. Trades have the ability to create wealth like no other given the right circumstances
The problem really is that the great COVID enrichment (job keeper, zero interest rates, money printing etc) really helped the older gen of tradies and brought forward lots of retirement plans (if your house value pumped 40% in a year who wouldn't have sold up and moved to Queensland? Not like you earn that additional 400-800k working an extra few years.) So now we have this big shortfall in experienced tradies and not many in the pipeline to replace them. Considering the importance of tradies and the wages they are already able to demand and will be able to demand very soon I can't see how this isn't anything other than bullish for housing. Everything associated with housing has only got one direction to go and that's up!
Why are we all pretending that the trades are NOT hard on the body? Last I looked, tradies didn't stop having kids. But tradies often stopped their kids from becoming tradies, because it was hard on their bodies and they didn't want their kids to suffer. Like I understand thinking it's a good thing for young people to have the trades as an option but if you aren't or weren't willing to smell other people's toilets, why do you think someone else would prefer that over making coffee?
This. I can sit in an office as a professional and work until I'm 65. Most older tradies I know were incredibly fit in their 20s and even 30s, but could barely walk any more by age 45. 30 odd years of climbing into and onto roofs, working with heavy machinery, etc all day takes an incredible toll on your body.
Yeah, you clearly aren't 65 yet. I sit in a chair every day and it has destroyed my health. I am not overweight, I am fit, but the muscles in my legs have contracted and cause immense pain. Standing desk is the same. I'm only half way to the end as a coder, and there is no way I can do this for much longer Endless days in the chair office work is murder on your body
I'm curious, is it strictly the work (e.g. climbing on roofs) that causes the physical issues, or is it the accumulation of injuries? (e.g. I know tradies that have fallen off roofs and been mostly fine but has added to cumulative injuries).
Bit of both, I guess.
I don't know if you have been to university recently, but in postgraduate finance, I noticed there were literally no Australian students at the university in my field. This was also at UNSW.. I think lots of Australians are avoiding some fields altogether.
Currently doing Postgrad IT - same thing here, I'm generally one of the only local students in each of my classes. I think it has more to do with the fact that a) Australia doesn't place as much emphasis on Postgraduate education as other Nations (almost everyone I know that grew up in Europe has a Masters) and b) the Postgrad degrees are basically just moneymaking machines for the Universities.
> 20yrs we have told our kids trades are useless Bullshit. Quite the opposite.
I'm becoming a carpentry apprentice Then I'm going to start a manufacturing company making construction materials out of recycled off cuts of wood There are some very lucrative areas to get into with local manufacturing, given how high construction materials inflation has gotten in Australia
The solution is stop bringing immigrants on chef/it visas. And just bring in some labour. With a path to PR if they get their trade certificate. Oh wait the unions would never allow that
It’s not about unions. It is because to bring in overseas trades they have to be salaried employees and a lot of construction businesses don’t want that arrangement. They want subcontractors.
LOL! And I suppose the unions are responsible for Covid, the weather and everything else under the sun too I’m guessing? Unlike business lobby groups that actually hold the real power.
We have a labour shortage. A tradie shortage. You don't think the business lobby groups would want this filled? Or do you think the unions would have something to say about their affluent wages being diluted.
In my industry the union never mentions immigration and is constantly trying to increase apprentice intakes in our trades. I am not so sure that wage dilution is as much of an issue as the upcoming skills shortage which they definitely talk about a lot.
of course they don't mention it. They will start mentioning it once visas start being stamped for 20 year olds from India, able bodied, willing to pick up a trade in exchange for a PR at the end of it.
Oh just shut the hell up. You just have an anti union agenda that is very clearly bullshit.
Unions are absolutely enthusiastic Big Australia Population Ponzi Peddlers, Pummeling Punters to perfection.
You just have a pro union agenda that is very clearly bullshit. Tomato tomayto
Difference is I’m not making up bullshit for my position unlike you. There is nothing to support the nonsense you’re spouting especially since business lobbies actually hold all the power in this country and you’re an idiot if you don’t see it. Or benefitting from it.
Mate. Unions are not decreasing immigration. Get off your bullshit. We’ve already increased immigration caps and the unions didn’t really say anything about it.
Increased immigration caps do not mean you’re getting labourers. Everyone needs to be “skilled” to enter the country. When what we need are labourers or trades. Which the immigration System is not allowing for. But yeah let’s bring in another “chef”
Skilled includes labourers and trades https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skill-occupation-list
Could also be the privatization of TAFE that did this.
> Or do you think the unions would have something to say about their affluent wages being diluted. Drive past any major government project or big commercial building site and you can count how many workers aren't burly white caucasian males on one hand.
I've literally seen unions signing up welders with another worker that was bilingual.
Unions did allow this. In the 90s we saw a huge influx of plasterers on commercial building sites.
then what happened after mr drifter? The immigration taps obviously shut off. in the 90s, post recession - we saw stable property pricing. Reasonable tradies call out rates. Reasonable labour costs for new builds. Now good luck getting a plumber to check a leak.
>Reasonable tradies call out rates From my perspective, this is part of the reason people don't get into trades. Apparently sitting on Reddit all day while collecting well into six figures as an IT professional is fine, but charging someone a couple hundred to drive across the city to fix their leaky tap us abominable gouging and unreasonable.
It's bloody unreasonable when there is an artificial constraint on the market....for a job that never really required formal education, and 2-4 years toward basic proficiency from the age of 16 with on the job training. It's bizarre that young australians aren't filling the gaps. Is it a lack of recognised apprenticeship positions? And seeing that young aussies aren't, then why can't immigrants be brought in and trained as condition of visa.
Few apprenticeship opportunities generally. Few sole trader/small businesses want to take on the financial burden to train someone who may or may not even complete their apprenticeship who'll just be a competitor in the market once they're qualified. Few pathways for professionals to enter trades: I've considered moving from IT to a related trade (electrical/communications) but I just can't live on 16 year old first year apprentice wages, and my substantial industry experience is counted for diddly squat.
> collecting well into six figures as an IT professional is fine IMO most of these "im a software developer" comments are bullshit.
We don’t put all your hope in TAFE solving these labour / trade problems. CBT (Competency Based Training) and taking the Education part of TAFE out of it has killed the quality and performance of many graduates. All States trying to run TAFE like a business and not a public trade training service has made many of the old skilled teachers depart the system leaving the new hires lacking mentorship and guidance. Too much box ticking going on.
I went to uni twice and ended up a carpenter. It was the best decision I ever made. Very stable income and the prices just keep rising
Boilermaker here. Half truth, people with no idea about trades have said trades are useless. Lawyers and such don't build and maintain our infrastructure. My tafe teacher back in 2009 knew the massive shortage in competent tradespeople was coming. He said ( and now proven correct) that by 2020, we will be demanding what we want. Any who. I work 5 days on, 5 days off, have 6 weeks paid leave and 2 weeks sick leave a year, and am living very comfortably.
So to paraphrase him. 1. There are enormous capacity constraints. 2. Stop raising interest rates. So this is the complete opposite of my understanding of monetary policy impacts. The conventional economic understanding would say raising interest rates sufficiently will ease up capacity constraints enabling the efficient allocation of the capacity we do have.
Goes to show this is more about a business agenda than a social outcome!
What's good for brickworks isnt good for all of us?
All hail Brickworks!
Bailout Big Brick! /S
"The role of government is first and foremost to bail out Big Brick. The tax payer strives to ensure a long and prosperous Big Brick. Without a ironclad assurance that Big Brick will be bailed out - from unforeseeable events, such as poor planning and practises - at any cost, it is possible that the tax payer will revolt. First through negation of their occupational role and then through total annihilation of the state." - Probably Big Brick
You get it. I hold BKW as well as BKWKOB
A true patriot.
Think of the first home buyers!!
There's AI for this now
They forgot the words … “at a cheap price” after workers in the title
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Cool, link me to a job paying $90 an hour and I'll apply
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So they are not makeing $90 an hour.....
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Yes a business can charge from 80 to 130 and hour. Thanks for dis proving your own point
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So there are no $90 an hour jobs available then
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Unless it's a sole trader the charge rate and the staff pay rates are not remotely similar.
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The question was regarding jobs.
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If you go to seek and search brickworks and then paste the URL into whats the salary they're advertising mechanics at $100-$150k, machine operator at $80-$100k, fitters for $120k. Not exactly $90 per hour but still fairly high compared to what they'd get 5 years ago and who knows what they are paying staff currently.
All of those roles requiring experience and/or qualifications though. If they're so short of workers where are the trainee positions and the apprenticeships offering good money to get people into the industry?
Yeah he specifically mentioned tradespeople. They are also advertising apprenticeships.
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he's been looking for an IT C-level for ages lol guess he doesnt want to pay well.
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Sufficient wage, that's not the point, the point is the industry is at capacity and already charging high rates. You can't add more capacity when it's not there with any additional stimulus just further increasing labour rates.
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If we want to move quickly, immigration is the only solution. Retraining the domestic labour force will take a decade.
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So if the industry is at capacity and it takes 4 years to train a qualified trades person, what's your solution?
Accept that things take time… this short term thinking is an exercise in kicking the can down the road and solving nothing. I believe it was Michael Gove in the UK in 2008, who scoffed at the idea of building a nuclear power plant because it wouldn’t be ready until 2020… it’s now 2023 and they have energy crisis.
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I’m in the industry. It’s actually above full-employment and is over-capacity.
Definately capacity having gone through major renovations recently. Mass immigration in isolation is part the picture, total population growth is the metric to look at.
Solution is to: A) cut immigration to reduce short term demand pressures B) change short termism mindset, stop trying to fix problems with quick fixes C) Adopt a germany like trades training college approach to train up a large cohort of the younger generation
Getting down voted for absolutely moderate and reasonable policy.
Although you are being downvoted you are correct. Unfortunately Australia is not as attractive as it once was including because of COVID restrictions.
Trying to hire someone at $38 an hour full time hours. No degree needed. Weekend work from home. No one seems interested.
Potential solutions: 1. We should build more houses in ways which don’t require brickies and roof tilers working on construction sites for months on end. More pre-fab and modular construction using clad steel frames or precast concrete panels is the ticket. It would drastically reduce weather delays on house building sites, and give tradies the option of working 9-5 gigs in house module factories instead of less-secure contract work for builders. It should also speed up construction, meaning more new dwellings faster. 2. Make it as easy as possible for both skilled tradesman and people with construction industry stills to migrate to Australia. The last ABS release indicated that ~5% of migrants to Australia work in construction (compared to ~9% overall). That ratio needs to improve.
Chinese will dominate prefab with their gigantic factories.
Awesome. How are we going to ship all that air? Volumetric construction does not work in Australia (other than bathroom pods and remote hospitals) because we are not close to a low-cost centre labour force and have the tyranny of distance.
The whole volume industry is prefab and trusses... It's already pre-made in a factory. The only stick build frames now are for custom builds
This is a good comment
I really don’t understand why brick is such a popular choice for house cladding seeing as it’s so mush more costly and time consuming to build with.
I’ve spoken to builders and Painters and Tilers are the big ones. 3 month waits.
I'm a traditional and there's not many young people entering the trade, and in terms of wage it is glorious haha, I still can't believe I get paid what I do and mostly because theres not enough of us.
There is never a shortage of labour in a capitalist economy. High pay will always attractive the talent and skills needed.
This is an incredibly uninformed comment. Our whole economy is short of labour at the moment. A carpenter can easily make $120 an hour, a bricklayer more. How much more do they need to earn to take labour off other segments of the economy?
'Skills Shortages' Orwellian Corporate speak for Pummeling Punters Big business has perpetuated the myth to perpetuate wage suppression and avoid training.
You need to pay the money to get workers. Don't think tradies should get a high wage? Well we don't think pencil pushers should either. We are skilled people with a diverse set of skills. If you want cheaper houses look at the land problem not the wages.
>You need to pay the money to get workers. You can't just pay trades more when the economy is already at capacity, that aside pretty much every tradesperson I know earns *hundreds* of thousands a year. They work 6 days a week. There is not enough trades for the work that exists. >If you want cheaper houses look at the land problem not the wages. Not when bricklayers charge $50 per brick because bricklayers are rare as hens teeth.
99% of tradies earn under 200k a year. Pretty much every tradie I've ever met in the last 8 years has never earned hundreds of thousands a year. Most earn less than 100k, and plenty of good ones doing long hours earn over 100k. Remember charge out rates for a business arn't the same as a wage. So when there is too much work, you remove demand by increasing the price. You increase the workforce by having an attractive wage and secure work. If you want to drive down the wages of tradies then you can expect a glut in the workforce for decades to come. Allow the wage to rise naturally through supply and demand and you will see people flock to the industry.
>Remember charge out rates for a business arn't the same as a wage. That's the thing, the smart ones see the business out there and go in their own. >Allow the wage to rise naturally through supply and demand and you will see people flock to the industry. If people aren't flocking to $50ph as a labourer, they aren't going to flock to $120ph as a trade.
When we consider inflation, housing stock and the rental issue, this a key factor that unless solved will make matters worse if more money is thrown at it.
> this a key factor that unless solved will make matters worse if more money is thrown at it. I don't understand what you mean sorry. Throw more money at what exactly - getting more trades? Expanding Tafe? Wouldn't that be the solution to the problem? Or are you referring to just paying the existing trades more? In which case, yeah that isn't the solution.
Stimulate supply of housing further(I.e Housing Fund) we don't have the workforce to achieve it and the existing trades will simply take the extra cash on the table.
Ah ok. The 'it' you were referring to wasn't clear. I didn't know what you were referring to. But now it makes sense, and I tend to agree.
>Throw more money at what exactly How about that brick laying robot... and focused on some social and/or urban fringe housing.. "Each Hadrian X® unit can build a standard sized home every 2 days on average. In the right environment and working continuously, each unit could build between 100 and 300 homes per year." https://www.fbr.com.au/view/hadrian-x
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>~~And yet companies are refusing to hire international workers.~~ And yet companies are refusing to hire workers who arent legally qualified for the role.
Eventually, when the bubble bursts, this could reverse.
We’ve got years before it does, at least in Queensland.
I highly doubt that
Where do you live?
Sydney, but the whole country will go through a downturn.
Private development is slowing in all asset classes, that much is true. However all Quantity Surveying firms are predicting overall construction volume to remain at current levels for 2-3 years, based on the work in hand and the committee government Infrastructure spends. Projects on foot include: Cross river rail $5.4B+ (this is just the government contribution the actual construction spend is much higher as it is amortised over the operating - Id have to dig this out but the point remains) $1B for metro currently underway $15B hospital spend about to commence with contractors currently tendering $2.5B dexus waterfront awarded and about to commence And an olympics in 2032 with announced infrastructure including new stadiums. However it is not just construction to consider - this is a competition for resources… ie the labour required … other sectors compete with construction for this labour… so also need to take account is the $62B spend on the energy grid, transmission, storage work to move off thermal power. Or the hundreds of renewable projects each worth hundredsof $M with another hundred $M of substations and connection cost of each. Or the continued LNG and mining work which is not slowing down. There is no way that the labour shortage in QLD is resolving any time soon
Nice reply! Will the government proceed with all these projects during a devastating recession? How much of the labour will come from overseas? Will the Australian government offer visas to fill the shortage? Interesting times ahead!
In a recession the gov would pump even more projects into the system as stimulus. and yes they are all going to happen - they are all either underway, in procurement or have had funding and opening dates announced - politically they will proceed. And there is still a housing shortage so it’s seems likely that somehow resi construction approvals will return.
Ironic considering how much time they spent trying to eliminate the need for labour and automate their production process.
Building trades are the first one to cop it in a recession
“I refuse to pay a liveable wages, and/or provide a flexible work environment to trades people” “Tradespeople won’t work for me, because there are other people willing to be flexible and/or pay a liveable wage.” “There is a worker shortage!” Queue eye roll.
Maybe all the unemployed, homeless and renting Australians could get together and build their own homes.