The shortage of skilled trades people remained acute in the September quarter of 2023 despite the return of skilled migration and a slowing in home building activity. Source: Timberbiz
The HIA Trades Report released this week provides a quarterly review of the availability of skilled trades and any demand pressures on trades operating in the residential building industry.
“The HIA Trades Availability Index deteriorated marginally in the September quarter to -0.65 compared to -0.62 June Quarter 2023,” HIA Senior Economist Tom Devitt said.
“This change, although small, shows that builders found it increasingly difficult to find sufficient skilled trades people to undertake building works.
“The return of overseas workers since the re-opening of international borders in late 2021, has helped ease these constraints over the last 12-18 months, with the Index markedly improved from the -0.92 reading a little over a year earlier,” he said.
Despite this improvement over the past year, the most recent reading highlighted how Australia’s home building sector continued to be constrained by some of the most acute shortages of skilled tradespeople on record.
Mr Devitt said the RBA’s steep interest rate increases since May 2022 had seen the volume of new work entering the pipeline slowing significantly.
This had resulted in Australia commencing just 25,390 new houses in the June Quarter 2023, to be one of the weakest quarters of the last decade.
“This fall in the volume of new home starts will ease the acute shortage of skilled trades people, over the next year as the volume of homes under construction continues to slow,” Mr Devitt said.
“Australia is expected to have its weakest year in over a decade in terms of the volume of new houses commencing construction in 2024.
“To ensure that Australia has the skilled tradespeople to build the homes needed in the coming years, the industry needs to have continued access to skilled migrants, as well as train and upskill our existing and future workforce,” he said.
By trade, the most acute shortages of skilled tradespeople in the September Quarter 2023 remained in bricklaying (Index reading of -1.17), roofing (-0.91), carpentry (-0.88), and ceramic tiling (-0.82).
Across the states and territories, all markets experienced a boom in housing demand during the pandemic, but it was the smaller markets where these booms were most significant. This is why the most acute shortages of skilled tradespeople in the September Quarter 2023 were in Queensland (-0.85 in the capital, -0.94 in the regions), South Australia (-0.75, -0.92) and Western Australia (-0.71, -0.77), compared with New South Wales (-0.62, 0.60) and Victoria (-0.59, -0.57).
