Apprentice numbers soar
The number of people undertaking apprenticeships in construction has skyrocketed in the past year, with New Zealand training record numbers of new builders.
Yesterday at a Wellington Holmes Construction housing project in the suburb of Brooklyn, it was announced that there are currently 20,000 apprentices in New Zealand.
Chief executive of building and construction apprentice organisation BCITO Toby Beaglehole said previously the organisation supported 600 to 800 new apprentices every year.
‘‘We’re now running at that every month,’’ he said. ‘‘If the number of apprenticeship signups continues at the current rate, we could have enough to meet the demand for qualified construction workers in New Zealand in the longer term. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve this without the Government’s investment in free-trades training, and support for employers with the Apprenticeship Boost.’’
More than 10,000 employers have signed up to the Apprenticeship Boost scheme, which provides up to $1000 a month for first-year apprentices and $500 for those in their second year of training, since it was rolled out in August last year. Almost $97 million in subsidiaries has been received, supporting 21,000 apprentices across the country.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the Government had not wanted to see a decrease in apprenticeships due to Covid-19, as had happened during the global financial crisis.
‘‘We know that we are going to need to train a lot more people in this area if we are going to meet the growth demand,’’ Hipkins said. ‘‘We also need to make sure we have replacement for those who are leaving the work force.’’
He said 20,000 apprentices was a ‘‘big, big day’’.
‘‘We’ve been really heartened by the Apprenticeship Boost. Initially it was designed to stabilise apprentices, to stop us seeing the exodus of apprentices that we might see in an economic downturn. In reality in building and construction, while there was a brief blip because of the lockdown, actually building and construction has not gone through an economic downturn,’’ he said.
Holmes Construction managing director Ben Holmes said: ‘‘We’re getting more applications for apprentices that I’ve ever seen.’’
The occasion also saw apprenticeship training arrangements transferred from BCITO to Te Pu¯kenga-New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, the newly merged mega-polytechinc.