Seven Apprentices, a Growing Skyline: Canberra's Bricklaying Gap and the Case for Qualified Trades

News · 2026-08-24 · 4 min read

Canberra keeps building upward, yet the trade workforce supporting that growth is getting thinner. At present just seven people are training as bricklayers across the whole ACT region. Over the same period, the construction workforce expanded by 10 per cent while apprentice numbers dropped by 20 per cent. The result is a trade running close to empty, kept going by a small group of tradespeople who are well beyond the age at which many of their peers start planning retirement.

Local industry bodies see a crisis. For qualified tradespeople with overseas experience, perhaps working in Dubai, Doha or Riyadh and thinking about skilled jobs in Australia from the Gulf, it looks rather different: a market with real, lasting demand and surprisingly low barriers to entry.

No licence required to lay bricks

The detail that tends to surprise people is this: bricklaying in the ACT is not a licensed occupation. Anyone may legally lay bricks on a residential or commercial site without ever showing a qualification. Lynne Sheffield, founder of Quality Training in Construction and a 30-year veteran of the industry, sees the results on the sites she visits, with uneven workmanship from workers who never received proper training.

That gap has two sides. For the industry, it is a genuine quality concern. For a tradesperson who does hold formal qualifications and solid site experience, it means entering a market where well-trained bricklayers are noticeably scarce and noticeably sought after. Daniel Swan, who has operated his own bricklaying business in Canberra for over two decades, has no shortage of work. What he lacks is dependable people on the trowel.

Three pressures that will not ease quickly

This is not simply a dip in the construction cycle. Several structural problems are compounding one another.

Training is tied to a quiet housing sector

Most bricklaying apprentices learn through residential building, and residential work in the ACT is subdued at the moment, even while commercial and infrastructure projects, among them the territory's light rail expansion, keep labour demand high. With fewer residential jobs, fewer employers are prepared to take on a four-year apprenticeship.

Too many apprentices leave early

Geordan Murray of the Housing Industry Association notes that many more apprentices begin than complete. The physical toll of the work, together with apprentices spending too long on general labouring rather than building their trowel skills, leads many to quit before they become truly productive on site.

An ageing workforce with no successors

On sites such as Swan's, tradespeople over 40 are typical rather than unusual. Unless new people arrive, whether trained apprentices or skilled migrants, that experience will retire without replacement.

Layer the ACT government's pledge to deliver 30,000 new homes by 2030 over all of this, and the numbers no longer add up. A housing goal of that size cannot be met with seven apprentices coming through.

How to read a labour market like this one

For qualified bricklayers and other construction trades looking at Australia, Canberra offers a useful lesson in interpreting demand. The indicators that matter most are:

Durable demand: need driven by government infrastructure commitments and long-term housing targets, not by a single project or a brief spike.
An acknowledged shortage: when employers openly admit a skills gap, it often means quicker hiring, greater willingness to sponsor and less competition for roles.
Light regulation at entry: this can shorten the time between arriving and earning, but it also means candidates should be ready to evidence their qualifications and experience clearly, because the local system will not do that screening for them.

None of this alters the reality that bricklaying is demanding physical work, as Canberra's own apprentices will confirm. For someone who already has the training and the endurance, though, a market this short of supply is where a skilled migration pathway usually rewards effort soonest.

A considered step for trade professionals

Canberra's construction boom has revealed a trade that local training simply cannot keep pace with. That is a serious problem for the ACT construction industry and a real opportunity for experienced tradespeople weighing Australia as their next move. Shortages this deep rarely happen by chance, and they seldom last indefinitely, so qualified bricklayers who are considering the move would do well to watch this market closely.

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