Tradie shortage could keep a lid on renovation supply, report warns

Australia is short an estimated 83,000 skilled workers across residential construction, according to Northern Rivers Times, reporting on a new Housing Industry Association study released ahead of National Tradies Day. The report, titled Australia's Future is Built by Tradies, argues that national housing targets cannot be met without a much larger pipeline of qualified builders, electricians, plumbers and other trades.

What the report says

According to Northern Rivers Times, the HIA report finds that workforce shortages are already slowing the delivery of new homes, pushing up construction costs, and making housing affordability harder to improve. It also notes that residential building is competing for the same workers as major infrastructure, renewable energy and technology projects, so simply shifting tradespeople between sectors won't fix the underlying gap — each sector needs its own skilled workforce.

HIA Managing Director Jocelyn Martin said the industry is dealing with shortages "at a time when demand for housing continues to grow," and that the fix is to grow the number of people entering and finishing trade careers, not just reshuffle existing workers.

The report sets out five priority areas: raising the status of trade careers, improving apprenticeship attraction and completion rates, supporting the builders who train apprentices, strengthening school-to-trade pathways, and investing more broadly in workforce capacity. HIA is using National Tradies Day to push for a serious, sustained national conversation on how to build that workforce — warning that without it, housing targets will stay difficult to reach regardless of how much land or finance is available.

What it means for your renovation budget

This is a national housing-supply story, but the same trades doing new-build work — carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers, tilers — are the ones homeowners rely on for renovations. A tighter labour market generally shows up in two ways: longer waits to get a job booked in, and less room for quotes to fall, because labour is usually the biggest line item in any renovation cost.

That matters most for jobs with a high share of licensed trade work. In Australia, electrical and plumbing work legally has to be done by a licensed tradesperson, so projects like a House rewiring (typically $11,000) or a Heat pump hot water installation (typically $4,500) are directly exposed to how many licensed electricians and plumbers are available in your area. A full Bathroom renovation (typically $21,900) or Kitchen renovation (typically $20,000) usually needs several trades in sequence — carpenter, electrician, plumber, tiler — so a shortage in any one of them can hold up the whole job, not just add cost.

Bigger structural jobs are similarly exposed. A Roof replacement (typically $15,000) or Underpinning (typically $12,500) both depend on specialist crews that are also in demand on new-build sites, and a Decking or Fencing project competes for the same carpenters and fencers HIA says are stretched thin.

Not every job is equally sensitive. Simpler, mostly-materials projects — a Gutter guard install (typically $1,750), a Garage door swap (typically $2,300), or Interior painting (typically $6,500) — lean less on scarce licensed trades and tend to be easier to book and price.

How we're tracking this

Our cost figures are built from labour hours at local trade rates plus materials, then checked against current market pricing and real quotes, so if trade scarcity does start pushing rates up in a state or region, it should flow through into our numbers rather than sit hidden in a national average. If a shortage is genuinely biting in your area, you're also more likely to see quotes vary widely between tradespeople — which is exactly when it's worth running a quote through our "is my quote fair" tool before you sign anything.

The practical takeaway

None of this means renovation costs are about to spike overnight. But it's a reasonable signal that quotes for trade-heavy jobs — rewiring, bathroom and kitchen renovations, roofing — are unlikely to soften much in the near term, and that booking ahead matters more than usual. If you've got a renovation on the horizon, getting on a good tradesperson's calendar early is likely to matter as much as chasing the lowest quote.