Master Builders continues to advocate for incentives for construction industry businesses to take on apprentices. 

The evidence from the COVID period is conclusive; many more building trade apprentices were take on during the pandemic when the Federal Government provided financial support for employers. 

Incentives will be particularly important to grow the number of host employers for GTO such as that based at Master Builders state of the art training facility in Norwest. 

The latest apprenticeship data shows that the numbers of construction trade apprenticeships in training continue to decline. This, as the labour shortage continues to limit the capacity of the industry and hold back its productivity. 

The latest quarterly data from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) shows nationally 105,790 construction apprentices were in training at the end of 2025 – the lowest number in five years. 

While apprenticeship commencements were up in NSW and nationally those numbers were eclipsed by the high number of withdrawals. 

NSW Construction Apprentice Activity in December 2025 Quarter

Commencements for the quarter were up more than 20% on the December quarter in the previous year, but completions were down more than 26% for the same period.