17/09/2025
The great Australian skills black hole: Why the bush can’t find a mechanic, builder or plumber - By Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers
Australia has not just a skills shortage but a worker shortage of any skill when it comes to finding people in the bush who actually want to work.
Out there in the real world there is no longer a shortage of mechanics or tractor drivers — it’s the whole backbone of the trades. Builders, sparkies, plumbers: the people who keep farms, houses and small towns from grinding to a halt.
Every one of them is now on the critical shortage list. Nationally, half of all trade and technician occupations are officially flagged as in shortage, and in regional areas the story is even grimmer — barely 54 per cent of advertised jobs are being filled, compared to the mid-60s nationally. Apprenticeships, once the pipeline that kept the tools in young hands, have collapsed from 250,000 commencements pre-2012 to just 151,000 in 2024, leaving a yawning gap in the next generation of skilled workers. Even when you can find skilled migrants willing to move bush, the system strands more than 600,000 of them in limbo, blocked from using their professions by endless red tape and costly recognition hurdles. The result? Six-week waits to get a mechanic, six-month delays to get a builder.
Apparently, there’s even a shortage of public servants in this country, though you’d never guess it by looking at the payroll. More than 2.5 million Australians now collect a government wage — that’s the entire population of Western Australia working for the Crown. In the 12 months to 2024 alone, another 87,500 were added to the headcount — that’s more boots on the ground than the entire Army, Navy, Air Force and Reserves combined. It makes you wonder if the only real “growth industry” left in Australia is the diversity, equity and inclusivity industry.
No surprise then that farmers are struggling to recruit; Canberra and Perth are hoovering up workers at an average salary of $115,000, with superannuation sweeteners and flexi-time rosters that make mustering sheep look medieval. Meanwhile, the trades pipeline has all but collapsed. Fewer than one in five school-leavers now pick up a tool, and those that do are quickly swallowed by the mines with six-figure starting salaries.
What a mess Australia has found itself in. We have become a country where, despite millions pouring into the country, skills shortages are everywhere, immigration is being gamed, and government is the biggest recruiter, the biggest spender and, in many regional towns, the biggest poacher of labour — leaving farmers, builders and small businesses to fight over what’s left.
For those on the land — or in the local dealership or engineering shop — the shortage of diesel mechanics, sheet-metal workers or ag technicians is a real and growing issue that the state and federal governments seem to have no answer for.
