It’s smoko and I’m stretched out across an offcut of carpet, work boots at the door to protect the expensive cork floor, the smell of meat pies and iced coffees wafting over me, when I spot the headline on my phone.

The article attached calls attention to Australia’s need for 90,000 extra tradespeople in the next three months, an almost impossible quota aimed at keeping the National Housing Accord’s target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 on track.

While poorly paid apprentices flee the industry, much of the skilled workforce we need is already on the job.Credit: Louise Kennerley

The headline creates a bit of a stir among the group of men I work with. Someone makes a snide remark about the new apprentice who left the site mid-morning and never came back. “Some blokes just aren’t made for it,” a senior tradesman chimes in.

I often tell people I’m working as a skilled labourer “at the moment” or “until something better comes along”. Truth be told, I’ve been offered apprenticeships. I’ve turned them down. It seems ludicrous to others (much less myself) that I would spurn the opportunity to learn a real trade and make a career out of the industry to which I already devote 40 hours of my week.

But there’s more than one reason why I, and many others in similar circumstances, are choosing this trajectory. At 20 years old, I’m under the (perhaps false) impression that I have time to think about my future. More pressingly, I’m under the (very real) impression that I have rent to pay this week and an electricity bill around the corner.

A colleague of mine, a first-year carpentry apprentice, tells me that half his weekly wage goes towards fuel. Every apprentice I know still lives at home, unable to move out due to cost-of-living pressures. They spend their lives building homes they cannot afford to live in themselves.

In schools across the country, young people are constantly pushed towards university, with little discussion of other options. The trades are seen as a solution for students who perform poorly or are deemed unlikely to succeed in tertiary education. This disregard makes the construction industry appear undesirable and, false though this may be, presents it as a place where people who have failed elsewhere end up.

What this strategy fails to take into account is that education looks different for everybody, and needs to be made equally accessible across all pathways.