Putting apprentice numbers in
perspective
9 October 2015
This week The Conversation added more fuel to a thriving narrative that says there’s a crisis in
apprenticeship participation in Australia.
For our part, we have been pouring over NCVER’s 2014 apprentice statistics for our inaugural
and soon-to-be-released 2015 Apprentice Annual. We’re finding that the picture is not as grim
as some are painting, at least as far as Queensland’s construction industry goes.
In this week’s article we want to highlight a systematic problem in the way apprentice numbers
are reported. The piece in The Conversation is just the latest example. It reports a 20% drop in
commencements and completions over the last 12 months, joining the ‘system-in-crisis’ chorus.
The first thing to say is that the 20% figure is completely true. But this is an absolute number
reported without any context.
Apprentice numbers tend to fluctuate with economic conditions. And so they should. That’s the
point of a demand-driven training model – training isn’t offered unless there’s a realistic prospect
of employment. It’s the advantage our model has over more supply-driven models like the
university system. Things being equal, a training system that is tightly coupled to broader
economic conditions will allocate new workers to jobs more efficiently than one that is less so.
One implication of the demand-driven model is that fluctuations in apprentice numbers won’t
reflect the health of the system any more than raw numbers of disease reflect the health of a
population. Epidemiologists understand that unless you put disease numbers in the context of the
population—they prefer ‘cases per 100,000 people’—you’re not actually saying anything
meaningful about the prevalence of disease.
So it is with the apprenticeship system. There is every chance that a drop in apprentice numbers
simply reflects the ebb and flow of the broader economy. It may actually be a sign that the system
is working efficiently to supply just enough skills to meet the needs of industry. What is for certain
is that declining apprentice numbers are not, on their own, evidence of a system in crisis.
Our preference is to present apprentice numbers on a per capita basis, where the ‘capita’ is the
overall population of workers in the economic sector we’re studying. So when we report
Queensland construction apprenticeship trends, we express the numbers per 100 Queensland
construction workers. We also report our numbers over a ten year period to keep things in proper
historical perspective, and we put everything in the context of how the industry as-a-whole is
performing.
When you approach the data like this, quite a different picture emerges. We will be releasing our
detailed analysis shortly in our 2015 Apprentice Annual, but here are three of the headline
outcomes.
Putting apprentice numbers in perspective
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Demand for apprentices in Queensland’s construction industry is consistent and
strengthening. As the chart below shows, there has been a 50% increase in the number of new
apprentices the industry has been willing to take on over the last decade.
Queensland’s construction apprentice intake compares well to other industries. The next
chart shows that construction took on more apprentices in 2014 as a proportion of its workforce
than other major Queensland industries.
Putting apprentice numbers in perspective
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Queensland has outpaced most other states (only bested by ACT) in terms of growth in
the intake of construction apprentices over the last decade. Although it needs to be noted
that Queensland’s growth is coming off a lower base than most states.
Putting apprentice numbers in perspective
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