Boom time for apprentices
The strong economic recovery has delivered a bonus in skills training. By James Mathias.
The economic shock waves from the pandemic have been bad for apprentices around the world. Australia, however, stands as an outlier as we experience a welcome an apprenticeship boom.
The December 2020 quarter figures released this week by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) show that there are more apprentices in training now than at any point over the last 5 years and that commencements in the December 20 quarter were 141.5 per cent higher than at the comparable point in 2019.
Apprentices are always more exposed to economic conditions as they are the first to go and the last to be put back on, which makes it all the more remarkable that you have to go back more than 5 years to get anywhere near the almost 298,000 apprentices in-training.
Compare this to the UK which in March this year reported that ‘The pandemic and lockdown period saw a disproportionate negative impact on apprenticeship starts for those aged under 19, and those starting an intermediate level apprenticeships. 23,400 fewer people were participating in an apprenticeship in 2019/20 than in 2018/19’.
It goes on to say that from August 2020 through to January 2021, there was an 18 per cent drop in the number of people beginning an apprenticeship.
There is no doubt that this was an area that the Australian Government targeted very early on, because they knew the harsh reality of the situation would disproportionally affect apprentices and what’s more is that around two thirds of apprentices are aged 24 years and younger.
The Boosting Apprenticeships Commencements program which will continue to pay half the wage of an Australian Apprentice until March 2022 in eligible areas of skills need was a game changer. This was in addition to the $1 billion subsidy to reduce the cost of training and course costs again in targeted areas of skills needs.
More critical to the argument of training more Australian apprentices is the pipeline of qualified Australian workers it creates. Overseas skilled labour is still some time from ever reaching the numbers we were once bringing in, so it is vital we are able to skill ourselves to be able to fulfil the jobs of the future. Even pre-pandemic most traditional trade apprenticeship career pathways were in acute skills shortage.
Here is what the success of the Morrison Government looks like:
there are now 15,000 more Australians under 24 in an apprenticeship in 2020 than in 2019;
overall, there are 16,000 more female Australian Apprentices in-training than in 2019;
Commencements in December 2020 were 40,620 higher than in December 2019;
there were 13,000 fewer dropouts in 2020 than in 2019.
Compare this to the Rudd Government during the Global Financial Crisis. In 2009 a media release by the then Minister for Employment, Julia Gillard, stated ‘the final Keep Australia Working Report released today, included recent figures showing people starting trade apprenticeships had dropped by more than 20 per cent during the economic downturn compared to the same time last year’.
To solve this problem of significant apprenticeship declines on their watch, Prime Minister Rudd, his deputy, Gillard and junior minister Mark Arbib hatched a $100 million ‘Apprenticeship Kickstart Program to support up to 21,000 young Australians entering traditional trades’.
The results – an additional 2,100 apprenticeship commencements over the period of November 2009 through to February 2010.
The Rudd Government during the GFC saw a decline in the number of apprentices and spent $100 million to get 2,100 additional apprentice commencements.
The Morrison Government during the COVID-19 recession saw a significant increase in the number of apprentices in training and achieved an additional 40,620 commencements.
Will the ABC report that? Don’t hold your breath.