Time just right for a trade
prenticeship or traineeship are employed within six months of completing their training.
Similar studies of university graduates - whose employment outcomes are tracked four months after completing a bachelor degree - show 71.3 per cent are in employment.
Apprenticeships and traineeships are the hallmarks of the vocational education sector, which TAFE SA education executive director Jen Rodger says is well known for its ability to produce job-ready graduates.
“(Graduates) can go into the workforce ready to pick up tools on day one,” Rodger says.
Despite the positive employment outcomes, fewer people are choosing to take up apprenticeships.
Research released last month shows just 192,000 people started an apprenticeship or traineeship in 2014, a drop of almost 22 per cent compared with 2013.
Fergusson says the decline is in part because of a “structural shift’’ in the industries that have typically been employers of apprentices.
“Manufacturing has always been a very big employer of trainees and the manufacturing sector has been shrinking,” Fergusson says.
Watchmaker Eliza Camac, 26, ditched plans to study laboratory medicine at university
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GET YOUR TRUCK LICENCE to do an apprenticeship with Jeff J Brown Watchmaker and Jeweller.
She had intended to just take a gap year before starting uni working at the watchmaker, but when the apprentice-
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FULL TIME & FLEXIBLE LEARNING OPTIONS GOVERNMENT SUBSIDISED TRAINING AVAILABLE ship came up, she grabbed the opportunity with both hands.
Now 26, Camac is partowner of the business.
“A lot of my friends have only just finished their university courses,” she says.