Powering Skills Organisation has released a new Research Paper titled ‘Electrician Workforce Capacity Study’.
For anyone who cares about our country’s energy security, future and infrastructure, this report should read like a warning. Unless we see significant changes to how we treat and train the upcoming generation of electricians, we will see major shortages across the industry.
Powering Skills Organisation (PSO) contends that earlier estimates of requiring an additional 42,500 licensed electricians by 2030 to avoid shortages, no longer rings true. With increased demand for housing construction, data centre builds, and other major infrastructure investments, PSO now estimates that a further 30,000 energy trades workers will be required.
The issue isn’t that people don’t want to come into our industry; in Queensland, one network advertised around 125 apprenticeships, and received around 7,500 applications. The issue is that the number of apprenticeships available do not meet workers interest and enthusiasm to join the trade, nor do they meet industry demand.
And we see some large employers gaming the system. Rather than hiring new apprentices to meet their ratios, they are instead picking up 3rd year apprentices from other employers. This doesn’t actually add to the number of apprentices in the system, and isn’t living up to their social responsibilities to train more people.
The Government needs to intervene to ensure that the next generation of electrical workers are trained up and meet the demand of our future industry. Read the full report here: https://poweringskills.com.au/portal/download/198/