The Morrison Government has delivered record levels of trade apprenticeships across the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury with trade apprentices continue to surge to record high levels across the country – reaching 220,000 in training in 2021.
New department program data demonstrates trade apprenticeships hit over 1425 in Macquarie in September 2021, the highest number on record and an increase of 21 per cent since Labor left office.
Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business Stuart Robert said the milestone cemented the Morrison Government as the best friend tradies in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury have ever had.
‘Whether is up in Katoomba or down in Richmond-the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury are in the midst of an apprenticeships boom, there has never been as many Australians having a crack at a trade apprenticeship than today right here.
‘Our record funding of $13 billion in skills and training through the pandemic has secured a generation of local Australian apprentices through the greatest shock since the Great Depression.’
‘With the economy firing again, hundreds of thousands of jobs available and billions of dollars of skills funding on the table this is a once in a generation opportunity for Aussies to get into a career that will last a lifetime.’
Liberal Senator for New South Wales, Senator the Hon Marise Payne, said skilling up young people was creating local employment opportunities and boosting economic activity.
‘Despite the challenges of the pandemic, this new data demonstrates the strength and resilience of our western Sydney economy and confirms that new jobs are being created locally,’ Senator Payne said.
‘Our economic recovery plan has meant that there are 100,000 more women in apprenticeships and traineeships now than there were prior to the pandemic.
‘The facts speak for themselves.
‘Under Labor the youth unemployment rate was 12.7 per cent – its 9.0 per cent today. The unemployment rate has been coming down and jobs are being created.’
Evidencing the positive impacts of the Morrison Government’s record funding of skills and training, the number of Australians undertaking skills and training has surged with total in-training apprenticeships and traineeships for September 2021 at 355,488, up from 264,585 in September 2020.
Apprenticeship commencements have risen significantly across all states and territories since the Morrison Government’s $3.9 billion Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements wage support was introduced in October 2020.
Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements has recently been backed in by the $716 million Completing Apprenticeships Commencements wage support.
The current surge in apprenticeships contrasts with the experience of the final year of the former Labor Government, which according to official NCVER data saw the number of apprentices and trainees in-training collapse by 22 per cent, or 111,300 from June 2012 to June 2013.
This was as a direct result of policy changes introduced by the Gillard Labor Government in 2012 aimed at addressing widespread rorting of incentive payments to employers, which led to the sharp decline in traineeships witnessed from 2013.
Macquarie lost one in five apprentices and trainees in Labor’s final year in office when in-training figures fell by 19 per cent (Jun 12 – Jun 13).
