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The state of the economy at the street level

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You can say that for every trade; a shortage of tradespeople because of a lack of apprentices completing their trade.

In the 1980's anyone in a trade was shunned as poorly educated, only the university educated could earn a decent living.

The rot started in the early 1990's. the recession that we had to have caused several years with business not signing up apprentices, which lead to a large downturn in numbers at TAFE colleges, and then funding cuts by state governments.

In the early 2000's the governments opened up trades training to all sorts of organisations, some very good and some very bad.

And then the mining boom hit, taking a large amount of the good and badly trained trades people. Not such a bad thing, because many came back better trained.

Finally, all the governments became aware of the dire need for more tradespeople. New rules for training centers were introduced, increased funding to TAFE's, monetary incentives for business and apprentices given. governments and unions got together and started big infrastructure builds with big wages, drawing in large numbers of workers and apprentices.

Covid threw a spanner in the works, work slowed due to government quarantine laws, and they gave money away like lollies. Covid ended and the flood gates opened to immigration, more people came into Australia than houses had been built during the shutdown. With consumer bank accounts full and shortages of goods to buy, prices went up.

Governments across the country continued to increase the number and size of infrastructure builds. Cost was not on the agenda; wages matched the increase on builds that went over budget. All for the greater good, they told us.

Now we find that Australia has reached a crossroad, and the most important decision in generation is which road do we take.

The apprentice issue is slowly being sorted, recruiting of young people for certain trades is now decided by education and counseling at high school with teachers and industry. More apprentices are staying in the trade, the quality of the tradespeople coming out of colleges has increased, wages and lifestyle are better.

However, we still have the problem of large government infrastructure builds and mining wages drawing away newly qualified trades people, which adds to the circle of labour shortage-immigration-inflation-inequality.

Governments across the country need to work together in the planning and implementation of infrastructure builds, so as not to put the rest of the workers in private industry under pressure. And governments need to get tougher with militant unions, like the builders and stevedoring unions.

But that's not going to happen. Australia is now too socialist for any change like that. Governments will continue to waste tax dollars, large businesses will pay for peace and cause high prices for everyone, taxes will continue to go up, and voters will take it because they are addicted to the welfare tit.

We are witnessing a new normal.
 
For nearly a decade the Liberals have hollowed out our TAFE system, leaving the training and skills of Australians behind and are directly responsible for the skills shortage we are now experiencing:
  • Between 2013 and 2021, the Liberals cut $3 billion from TAFE funding, only returning a fraction of these cuts when the sector was in crisis after Covid.
  • TAFE funding under the Liberals has consistently lagged behind funding for schools and universities under the liberals, despite the numbers of students in the TAFE system rising year on year.
  • TAFEs have also lost thousands of teaching jobs nationally over the last 10 years. Almost 10,000 full time TAFE teaching positions were lost across six states and territories, including almost 9,000 in New South Wales and Victoria alone, between 2012 and 2019.
  • Lack of funding has also resulted in many TAFEs being forced to close or significantly downsize campuses over the last decade. While national data is difficult to obtain, and the fact that many TAFEs have chosen to significantly downsize campuses rather than close them completely hides the extent of the problem, the data that is available is deeply concerning. In NSW for example, 12 TAFE campus properties have been ‘divested’ (sold) since 2012 – making a total of 33 sold since 1995.
 

Tafe colleges are controlled by the state governments.

In my state, Labor has been in power more often than the Liberal's during my lifetime.

It was under the Labor government that my state TAFEs became a shell of what they once were. The management was so poor that the majority of the quality trainers either left and found better job satisfaction or retired. The same Labor government sold off large numbers of its public housing stock, causing the current homelessness we are seeing in our city and suburbs.

No political party is perfect, but if we're going to blame them, we should make sure we blame the right ones

EDIT: I should mention that I have attended both TAFE and University, and I have sent several of my staff to TAFE and private trades training centers over the past 30 years. Teh TAFE system in my state has improved over the past several years.
 
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is that possible to please get the link to that stat as it will be used for another forum to stirr up a few perople
 
JohnDe said:
The rot started in the early 1990's. the recession that we had to have caused several years with business not signing up apprentices, which lead to a large downturn in numbers at TAFE colleges, and then funding cuts by state governments.
Click to expand...
Plus the big one - utilities were gutted and manufacturing's decline accelerated at that time. Between the two, that's where most of the apprenticeships were.

The contractors never did put so much emphasis on training. The apprentices learned a fair but but were essentially cheap labour. The contractors would never build anything just for training alone, if it's not bringing $ in it doesn't happen.

JohnDe said:
The apprentice issue is slowly being sorted, recruiting of young people for certain trades is now decided by education and counseling at high school with teachers and industry.
Click to expand...
I don't know how it worked in other states but in Tas there always was an educational bar to be jumped.

For the electrical trade, the mandatory requirements in maths, science and English kept the lower half of the population (academically) out and that was the intention. There's no room to negotiate on those, they're set in stone by law.

The big employers also had their own screening process and some were pretty rigid. Eg 3 hour written exam in a very school-like manner being constantly watched over and usually done at an intentionally inconvenient time to weed out anyone less than fully committed. One also ran a general IQ test component of that and a psychological test as well.

But that's when apprenticeships were highly sought after and the number of applicants far exceeded available positions.

I've screened and interviewed applicants for apprenticeships many years ago. Was about 50:1 ratio of applicants to jobs so the process had to be ruthless. Anyone without required academic results was first to be rejected, that was the easy step.
 
Hearing from other restaurant owners that it's gone dead out there. Apparently MacDonalds did their quietest week ever.
Noticeable this week. Restaurant was not as busy as it usually is.

Bunnings was devoid of tradies when I went through. Bunnings hasn't cut prices from what I've noticed. If I see them start discounting popular products I'll know it's bad.
 
Restaurants all seemed busy tonight. My one got smashed by customers. Super busy.

So maybe people have gone back to money saved during the week and splurge Friday-Saturday.

Building game seems dead at the moment.

Not sure on car sales as I know a bunch of guys that upgraded their cars. Surely new car sales must be doing it tough.
 
moXJO said:
Building game seems dead at the moment.
Click to expand...
Two houses being built near me at the moment.

One is an owner builder. It was under construction when I first looked at the area and that was in 2018 and from Google Earth images it looks like construction started 12 years ago, early 2012. It's progressing, it's getting closer now, but still work being done and not complete. I take it they're not in a hurry.

The other is a professionally built house where it all seemed to be going real quick with the foundations done, frame up, roof on and so on but now it's gone dead quiet, work seems to have come to a complete halt with pallets of bricks sitting there and nothing happening. So I assume there's a bottleneck with a shortage of bricklayers, or perhaps they're waiting on another trade (plumbing or electrical most likely) to do their bit first and there's a hold up there. Either way, work's come to a halt.
 
mullokintyre said:
WFH has not really contributed much to productivity.
Mick
Click to expand...
Just my observation but it's a common misconception that business wants to maximise productivity.

Shareholders might want that but management often has very different incentives. For the ladder climbers, maximising headcount under their management is often more important than productivity.
 
My weekend only restaurant rush seems to be real. Restaurant was flooded during the Friday Saturday period. People eating at home during the week and splurge Friday-Saturday.

Might be a temporary blip. Consumers have funny temperaments.

Builders work has dried up. Previously they had a lot of newer builds on the books. But the delay in building times meant that prices went up. The banks then pulled the plug on lending anymore money to build and the project fell over.

So it's small jobs right now. Prices should be going down.
 
I hope so. I'm trying to get a few small jobs done; so far I can't land a reply, let alone a quote
 
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