Skills Shortage in the Electrical and Associated Industries and Employers' Perceptions of Apprentice Training as a Contributing Factor

A strong skills base and effective skill development are important ingredients for a country to successfully compete within a global setting (ANTA 2003, objective 4). The size of a skills base will be determined by the number of skilled workers presently in the workforce, their propensity to remain there, the number of new skilled entrants to the workforce and the rate of skill formation among workers. The incidence of newly skilled people will derive from the training effort in the previous period and/or increments to the population of skilled workers through migration. When the number of new entrants is not sufficient to offset the level of exits of a given skill, given the labour market needs for that skill, a skill shortage will develop. There is evidence of this in a number of trades within Australia at the present time, including the electrical trades (Financial Review 2002) as there is also for a number of other countries such as Canada, the United States and the UK where shortages of electrical trades-persons have recently been reported (Jenkinson 1997; Canadian Labour Congress 2002; Bond 2002; Wark 2002; P Sherwood 2001; Hillage et al 2002; Grant 2003, Anonymous 2002)