Master Builders Australia (MBA) has welcomed the release of Jobs and Skills Australia’s Towards a National Jobs and Skills Roadmap.

MBA chief executive officer Denita Wawn says the roadmap is a valuable vehicle for the Government’s ambitious skills and workforce goals and what is needed now.

“Ensuring the VET sector delivers high-quality training that is occupation and industry-relevant and valued by employers and the Australian population more broadly is critical to meeting current and future workforce needs in the building and construction industry,” she says.

“A VET qualification is the highest level of education attained for over 600,000 building and construction workers. This is 54% of the total workforce and 80% of workers that have a post-school qualification. An analysis of current skills shortages shows that 36% of occupations assessed were in national shortage in 2023. 50% of the occupations in the category assessed as being in national shortage are technicians and trade workers.”

Denita says the Government needs to take an approach to ensure that policy levers are being pulled in the same direction to ensure we don’t find ourselves in a position of one step forward, two steps back.

“The proposed industrial relations legislation currently before parliament will counter efforts made in the skills space and make it harder for employers to create new jobs. It will sap productivity. Better incentivise people are needed to join and stay in these occupations now and in the future, if Australia is to meet Housing Accord and Net Zero targets,” she says.

Additionally, Jobs and Skills Australia’s analysis also reveals that gender imbalance is a feature of many skill shortage areas.

Denita says occupations that have a highly gender-skewed workforce are significantly more likely to be experiencing shortages than occupations where the gender balance is more even.

“More work needs to be done to remove gender imbalances and in particular, support women in the workforce. The construction industry attracts more male than female workers. Improving the attractiveness of the industry to women presents a massive opportunity to increase the pool of potential workers,” she says.

Completion rates of VET courses are another concern to the industry and Skills and Workforce Ministers have identified as a problem.

With the early stages of an apprenticeship being the most tenuous, Private Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) have higher retention and completion rates than TAFE with better pastoral care and support in place, according to Denita.