Trained Bricklayers Wanted: What Canberra's Trade Gap Means for Skilled Workers from Abroad

News · 2026-08-24 · 5 min read

Canberra keeps growing upward, with more and more buildings. But the group of workers who build them is slowly getting smaller. At the moment, only seven people are training to be bricklayers in the whole ACT region. Over the same period, the construction workforce has grown by 10 per cent, while apprentice numbers have dropped by 20 per cent. The trade is now almost running on empty. It depends on a small number of tradespeople who are well past the age when most people in their generation begin to think about retirement.

Local industry groups see this as a crisis. Skilled migrants who are choosing where to build a trade career may see it differently. To them, it looks like a market with real, lasting demand and very few barriers to getting in. If you are a qualified tradesperson looking for jobs in Australia for Indonesians, this story is worth reading.

Bricks can be laid without a licence

Here is a fact that surprises many tradespeople. In the ACT, bricklaying is not a licensed occupation. Anyone can legally lay bricks on a commercial or residential site, and they never have to show a qualification.

Lynne Sheffield has worked in the industry for 30 years. She is the founder of Quality Training in Construction. When she visits job sites, she sees the results of this rule: uneven work from people who were never trained properly.

Good news for workers with real training

This gap has two sides. For the industry, it is a real quality problem. But imagine you are a migrant tradesperson who does have formal qualifications and real experience on site. You would be entering a market where properly trained bricklayers are clearly hard to find, and clearly valued.

Daniel Swan has run his own bricklaying business in Canberra for more than two decades. Employers like him have plenty of work. What they lack is reliable people to work with the trowel.

Three reasons the gap will last

Some people might think this is just a short dip in the building cycle. It is not. Three long-term problems are adding to each other:

Not enough apprentices are coming through. Most bricklaying apprentices learn on residential building jobs. Right now, residential activity in the ACT is slow. Meanwhile, commercial and infrastructure projects, such as the territory's light rail expansion, keep labour demand high. With fewer residential jobs, fewer employers are willing to take on a four-year apprenticeship.
Keeping apprentices is harder than finding them. Geordan Murray from the Housing Industry Association says many more apprentices start than finish. The work is very physical. Apprentices also spend too much time on general labouring and not enough time building their trowel skills. As a result, many leave before they become truly useful on site.
Older workers are retiring. On sites like Swan's, it is normal to see tradespeople over 40. Without new people, whether trained apprentices or skilled migrants, that knowledge retires and nobody replaces it.

Now layer the ACT government's promise to deliver 30,000 new homes by 2030 on top of these problems. The numbers simply do not add up. A housing target this big cannot be reached with seven apprentices in training.

Signs to look for before you choose a destination

If you are a qualified bricklayer, or you work in another construction trade, and you are considering Australia, Canberra's shortage teaches a useful lesson. It shows how to read a labour market well. Look for these signs:

Demand that lasts. The need should be long-term and built into the system, not a quick spike. Here it comes from government infrastructure commitments and long-range housing targets, not from one single project.
A skills gap that employers admit openly. This often leads to faster hiring, more willingness to sponsor and less competition for placements.
Few rules blocking entry. This can shorten the time between arriving and earning. But it also means you should be ready to show your qualifications and experience clearly, because the local system will not check them for you.

It helps to prepare your papers early. Write an English-language CV that lists your trade training and site experience. Get your Indonesian-language certificates translated into English as the visa rules require, and check if an English test such as IELTS or PTE is needed.

Our view for trade workers

Remember that bricklaying is truly hard physical work, and Canberra's own apprentices will say the same. Still, for someone who already has the training and the energy, a market with so few workers is exactly where a skilled migration pathway usually brings results most quickly.

Canberra's building boom has shown a trade that local training simply cannot keep up with. This is a real problem for the ACT construction industry. It is also a real opportunity for skilled tradespeople who see Australia as their next step. Markets do not end up this short of workers by accident, and they rarely stay this way for long.

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