Recent results for the residential and commercial property sector suggest secure, and lucrative futures for incoming skilled workers.
Australia's economic strength during the past decade has been in large part due to the healthy property markets around the country.
The residential and commercial property markets have been spurred on by a number of supporting factors. Favourable negative gearing conditions drove demand for investment properties during the 90s and an increase in new developments have been led by both large and small property development companies.
Many tradespeople in the building, construction and related areas of real estate, horticulture and landscaping have become entrepreneurial successes along the way.
The recent Master Builders Association of Australia (MBAA), which has 17,000 members, reported that profits and construction rose in the September quarter.
Specifically, work done on residential buildings rose by 1.6 per cent to $9.9 billion and non-residential building rose by a seasonally adjusted 7.6 per cent to $6.8 billion.
In the MBAA's national survey, builders were asked about the outlook for their own businesses. In WA and Queensland around 90% of those states' major builders had average or above-average profits in the September quarter. Builders own business expectations for the next six months indicated they expected business to improve strongly.
With profitability comes employment. Builders surveyed also indicated they would be hiring both employees and subcontractors in the coming six months as 74 per cent have a backlog of work for 3 to 6 months or more.
Critical to the supply aspects for building and construction are the availability of skilled staff - especially for project managers, site managers, foremen/supervisors and, increasingly, carpenters and bricklayers.
It's confirmation that now is a great time to be considering or completing an apprenticeship in building and construction where challenging jobs are readily available to those with the training, communication and professional skills to be successful.
The skills shortage also provides an opportunity for semi-retired trade skilled people to work part-time or for certified tradespeople to consider going back a the trade they may have abandoned in the past.
