Tradespeople in Australia’s home building sector remain in shortage despite a slowdown in new housing construction which has occurred over recent years.

And the shortages are leading into higher trade prices.

The Housing Industry Association has released the June edition of its quarterly HIA Trades Report.

The report provides a quarterly review of demand and availability of skilled trades across 13 categories which are needed for residential housing.

Overall, the report shows that a shortage of tradespeople remains throughout most of the country.

The HIA Trades Availability Index remained unchanged -0.40 in the June quarter 2025.

At this level – which is unchanged from the previous quarter – the reading indicates an undersupply of skilled labour.

The Index is a measure between +2.00 and -2.00. A positive reading indicates easier access to skilled trades whilst a negative reading indicates that trade supply is in shortage.

Partly as a result of the shortage, upward pressure remains on trade prices.

Over the year to June, trade prices increased by 3.4 percent.

This exceeds both economy-wide wage growth and the rate of increases that were typically observed prior to the pandemic.

Shortages continue across almost every category of trade and almost every location.

In terms of occupations, twelve of the thirteen categories of trade are in shortage. The only trade for which no shortage exists is electrical.

The most acute shortages can be seen in bricklaying and ceramic tiling.

Shortages are evident across every location except for Melbourne, which recorded a near equilibrium result of +0.08.

The most acute shortages are evident in locations where the recovery in home building activity is already underway.

The list is headed by Perth (-0.89) and is followed by Brisbane (-0.73), Adelaide (-0.54) and Sydney (-0.32).

The shortage is even more severe in regional markets, with Regional South Australia (-0.96) having the worst reading.

This was followed by regional Western Australia (-0.69), regional Queensland (-0.60), regional Victoria (-0.51) and regional New South Wales (-0.31).

The shortage of residential tradespeople comes despite levels of new home building having eased from their heights during the detached house construction boom that was seen in 2021 and 2022.

As of March, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that the nation had just under 220,000 dwellings under construction.

This represents a reasonably elevated level of construction by historic standards but is well below the 244,180 peak that was seen in the September quarter of 2022.

The shortage also come as the nation is not building anywhere near the number of homes which are needed in order to deliver upon the national housing target of 1.2 million new homes over the five years from 1 July 2024.

To achieve this target, the nation would need to deliver 240,000 homes per year or 60,000 homes per quarter.

In the March quarter, the nation completed only 43,517 new dwellings.

The fact that a trade shortage exists even at current building levels indicates that skilled labour supply is likely to emerge as a barrier to the nation achieving the aforementioned target.

Commenting on the report, HIA Chief Economist Tim Reardon said that demand for construction tradespeople remained strong.

Reardon called for more action to increase the supply of skilled tradespeople.

“Construction skilled tradespeople remain in high demand, with the shortage remaining more acute than anytime pre-pandemic,” Reardon said.

“Increasing the supply of homes and improving housing industry productivity will require a sufficient supply of skilled tradespeople.

“The shortage is more acute in areas where home building activity is picking up, including South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

“Australia’s two largest home building markets, New South Wales and Victoria, will further add to demand for skilled labour when activity there starts to pick up as well.

“In order to help alleviate the shortage of tradespeople as activity picks up, access to overseas skilled trades is required in the short term.

“Australia’s population is increasing at a rapid rate, but these new migrants are not skilled tradespeople. There were only 6,086 migrants in home building occupations on Subclass 482 Visas at the end of March 2025.

“Current migration settings need to be tailored through a dedicated construction visa, due to the independent contracting nature of work in the housing industry.

Why are electricians in good supply despite the clean energy transition?

An interesting observation in the report is that electrical trades are the only trades where an adequate supply of tradespeople exists.

At first, this may appear to be surprising on account of both the amount of renewable energy work being undertaken and the ongoing push toward greater electrification of buildings.

Asked about this why this might be the case, Reardon offered several observations.

First, electrical has been the most successful of all trades in attracting women and girls to the industry.

Partly as a result, electrical trades have ben more successful compared with many other trades at growing the number of apprentices who are coming through and thus the supply of their workforce.

He suggested that other potential reasons could include easier international recognition of skills and prior learning, greater use of pre-wired wall systems, a slower update of roof top PV than a decade ago, electrical being typically one of the higher paid roles on a building sight (and being relatively clean, inside and less dirty compared with bricklaying and plumbing) and electricians being less attractive to FIFO operations or some other construction sectors.

On the latter point, Reardon says that mining and other construction do require electricians, but at a smaller proportion compared with the residential sector.

He says that the skills of electricians are not as adaptable to the nature of other construction roles outside of housing and building.

Crudely, he says that this means that electricians ‘don’t go and drive dump trucks or pour concrete’.

By contrast, Reardon says that some of the skills of bricklayers, concreters and carpenters are in more universal demand.

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