The Daily Dose #346 | Why Australia Is Losing Bricklayers And Why More Apprentices Won’t Fix It | Andy Shaw

Australia needs more bricklayers. But according to Andy Shaw, simply putting more apprentices into the system won’t solve the problem.

Andy is the founder of Brickies Network and has spent more than 35 years in construction. He started as an apprentice bricklayer, built and ran his own bricklaying business, worked on the builder side of the industry and has spent the past five years looking closely at how bricklaying businesses operate across Australia.

In this episode of The Good Builder Podcast, Andy and Az go deep into a trade that operates very differently from most others in residential construction.

They unpack why bricklayers are particularly exposed to construction cycles, how per-brick pricing can hide the true cost of doing a job, why apprentices are leaving, what happens when experienced bricklayers disappear from the industry, and how changing employment and compliance requirements are reshaping the economics of running a bricklaying business.

Andy also explains why skilled migration alone isn't a simple solution, why protecting yourself from non-payment matters, and why he believes the industry may be trying to solve the bricklayer shortage from the wrong end.

One of the biggest ideas from the conversation is simple: before Australia can successfully train the next generation of bricklayers, it needs sustainable businesses capable of employing, training and retaining them.

This is a detailed conversation about bricklaying, but many of the issues Andy raises apply much more broadly across Australian residential construction.

In this episode:

• Why bricklaying businesses operate differently from other trades

• The economics behind per-brick pricing

• Why Andy believes the industry is particularly fragile

• Where apprentices are being lost