All housing construction trades remain in shortage throughout Australia even as the volume of home building work being done throughout the nation has eased, the latest report suggests.

And a key housing industry lobby group estimates that the nation needs around 83,348 new tradespeople in order to meet national housing delivery targets.

The Housing Industry Association has released the September quarter edition of its HIA Trades Report.

The report provides a quarterly review of the availability of skilled trades that operate in Australia’s residential building industry.

According to the report, the nation’s trade shortage deteriorated further in the September quarter.

All up, the HIA Trade Availability Index fell from -0.49 in the June quarter to -0.54 in the September quarter.

Each of the thirteen trades tracked by the report (including one known as ‘other trades) is in shortage.

Shortages are particularly acute in bricklaying, ceramic tiling, other trades, plastering, carpentry and roofing.

The shortages are evident across all major regions, with Perth, Regional Queensland and Regional South Australia being particularly affected.

Whilst overall trade prices remained steady during the September quarter, pricing pressures remain for some trades.

These include ceramic tiling, general building, other trades, carpentry and landscaping.

The latest data highlights the degree of challenge which Australia faces in achieving its target of delivering 1.2 million new homes over the five years from 1 July 2024.

Established under the National Housing Accord, that target would require the nation to complete an annual average of 240,000 homes per year.

With aforementioned trade shortages being evident at a time when the nation delivered only 176,000 new dwellings in 2023/24, questions remain about the capacity of the nation’s workforce to deliver 240,000 homes each year for the next five years.

In a recent report, HIA suggested that an additional 83,000 tradies would be needed across key trade categories if the target is to be met.

This is based on the fact that the nation’s estimated 277,827 tradespeople across the twelve aforementioned trade categories completed only 173,000 homes in calendar 2023 (and subsequently completed 176,000 homes in 2023/24 as mentioned above).

Of course, it does not necessarily hold that the need for tradespeople increases in a directly linear fashion with the number of homes being built.

It may be possible, for instance, to build more homes with fewer tradespeople by shifting to multi-residential construction (units, townhouses, apartments etc.) as opposed to single detached home building.

Greater uptake of innovative construction methods such as offsite fabrication may further help to minimise the need for on-site labour.

Nevertheless, it is clear that many more skilled workers will be needed in order to meet targets.

In its report, HIA outlined fourteen recommended actions.

These are aimed boosting the number of apprentices in training, supporting older workers to remain in the industry and maximising use of skilled migration.

The recommendations include a large-scale national campaign between government and industry to highlight the benefits of taking up a role in the residential building industry and highlighting the job and career opportunities.

Another involves targeted programs for mature aged workers, women and workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to promote construction trade careers as well as to provide appropriate financial and mentoring support to enable these workers to succeed.

HIA Senior Economist Matt King said that the shortage is being driven as the housing construction industry faces competition for workers from other construction sectors such as civil construction and commercial/non-residential building construction.

This is particularly the case as the nation is working through a record pipeline of public sector transport projects and as a significant volume of projects associated with the energy transition are either in planning or underway.

“The new home building industry is in stiff competition for workers with buoyant non-residential construction activity and a historic Commonwealth Government-funded engineering construction project pipeline,” King said.

“Meanwhile, as home building market confidence returns and owner-occupiers and investors increasingly re-enter the market; there’s been an acceleration in demand particularly in Perth, Southeast Queensland and Adelaide.

“The confidence is largely brought about by the fact that the RBA hasn’t increased interest rates for almost a year, population growth is still strong, the unemployment rate remains low and real incomes have stabilised.

“Yet Australia does not currently have enough tradies to build the number of homes needed to house the population and take pressure off housing costs.

“Trades prices are running at an annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent, which is much higher than the 2.0 per cent average over the decade prior to the pandemic.

“The residential building industry currently employs approximately 278,000 tradies across the twelve key trade occupations required for home building. The trades workforce needs to grow by at least 30 per cent to meet a 1.2 million home target over the next 5 years. That is over 83,000 additional tradies.

“The most acute shortages of skilled tradespeople remain in bricklaying, tiling, plastering and carpentry.

“This means a significant boost is needed in a variety of trade occupations to get these much-needed homes completed.

“Despite concerted efforts to boost the domestic trades workforce, significant challenges remain. Creating career opportunities for the local workforce must be the priority, however this alone will not solve the tradie shortage.

“Skilled migration is the other key lever that the Government can pull in the short term to address the immediate shortage of tradies.

“Decisive action to support the sourcing of skilled trades domestically and from overseas is needed now, and a failure to act proportionate to the growing skills shortage risks only worsening the national housing shortage.”

 

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