“The biggest issue is the first year to 18 months for the apprenticeship because that’s when it’s hard to make money out of them.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of education having to happen.”<\/p>\n
Colleen Upton from Hutt Plumbing and Gas said she knew what it was like.<\/p>\n
“It takes five years to bake them,” said Upton.<\/p>\n
![\"Colleen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4MFAWW0_Colleen_Photo_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Colleen Upton from Hutt Plumbing and Gas<\/p>\n
Supplied<\/p>\n
She had trained more than 60 apprentices over 34 years.<\/p>\n
“Anything you’re doing now, you’re not seeing the real benefit of for at least three to four years.”<\/p>\n
Upton had been forced to pause on taking new apprentices for the past 18 months because the market had been too tough.<\/p>\n
But it was not from a lack of interest.<\/p>\n
“I would get, without word of a lie, at least three CVs a week, at least, some weeks more.<\/p>\n
“At those times when school finishes for the year or there’s a block course finished, you could get six or seven.”<\/p>\n
Like Wallace, she agreed it was not just one thing causing the shortage.<\/p>\n
She said Australia was luring a lot of people away after they completed their apprenticeships.<\/p>\n
“I had an apprentice who’d just finished his time here.<\/p>\n
“He was on early $30 an hour and he walked into $55 an hour. We just can’t compete with that.”<\/p>\n
Ryan Wilson experienced exactly that. He jumped the ditch in 2024 after qualifying at just 23 years old.<\/p>\n
“Career wise, there’s just so much more opportunity and to be totally frank, a lot more money.<\/p>\n
“Bigger economies, more work.”<\/p>\n
![\"Ryan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4KW7OM8_ryan_jpeg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Ryan Wilson.<\/p>\n
Supplied<\/p>\n
He was not the only one feeling the lure.<\/p>\n
“I believe from my final block course, you’d probably be looking at about half of that final block course moved to Australia or further afield.”<\/p>\n
Rhiannon Jarvis, the owner-operator at Jarvis Plumbing and Gasworks in Lower Hutt, was seeing those holes left behind too.<\/p>\n
“Just two weeks ago, one guy had been with us five years, pretty much the week after he signed his gasfitting final thing, he moved to Brisbane.”<\/p>\n
“The age that people enter an apprenticeship, they’re young, it takes them five years, which is a pretty long time.<\/p>\n
“And there’s been so many chops and changes in the primary training institutes over those five years that it has felt like a real drag for them to become qualified.<\/p>\n
“So, I can kind of understand that as soon as they get that ticket, they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m out of here”<\/p>\n
She said it was made finding replacements a real struggle.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been advertising for one [skilled plumber] for a long time… Pretty constantly for a year and a half.”<\/p>\n
But they were already hard to find and that limited her business’ capacity.<\/p>\n
Jarvis said the present skills shortage meant there had already been a problem with the pipeline of new people for some time.<\/p>\n
And it is about to get worse.<\/p>\n
According to the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, the average age of certifying plumbers, gasfitters and drainlayers was 49.<\/p>\n
Jarvis said about 1000 people on the tools were aged over 65 and looking to retire soon, which would create more knowledge, skill and productivity gaps.<\/p>\n
“Every single construction project in New Zealand needs plumbing, gasfitting, and drain laying.<\/p>\n
“And we’re talking about protecting drinking water, sanitation, public health, gas.<\/p>\n
“Without enough skilled plumbers, it’s going to be pretty hard to put that infrastructure and housing in place that we need.”<\/p>\n
Wilson said it would be a huge issue within 10 years.<\/p>\n
“You’re going to notice a huge amount of our trained workforce or newly trained workforce, younger generation coming through, moving to Aussie in search of their opportunities, better lifestyle,<\/p>\n
“To be honest, to me, it’s a bit of a no-brainer.”<\/p>\n
Jarvis, Upton and Wallace all said there was also a problem with the training and courses given to apprentices, further slowing the process.<\/p>\n
All three spoke about how apprentices faced struggles getting into necessary courses, a lack of tutors and poor equipment.<\/p>\n
But Wallace said there was no quick fix.<\/p>\n
“You know how they say we aren’t good at infrastructure planning. We’re also not good at workforce planning to meet those peaks and demands.”<\/p>\n
He said gasfitting was in the worst state because people had stopped training in it over politicisation and concerns natural gas would run out.<\/p>\n
Upton also believed the problem could be solved by looking to more of the population.<\/p>\n
Out of 14,000 people in the three trades, only 120 were women. Four of them worked for her.<\/p>\n
“There’s a whole lot of women there that are interested in coming into our industry but don’t even get the opportunity of an interview because some people don’t think it’s a job for women”<\/p>\n
But with shortages already present, and green shoots on the horizon, the industry knows it is about to be in trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand is heading for a critical shortage of plumbers, with fewer than 20 percent of businesses taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-578135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}