A recent B2B News reader poll asked whether the Government should fund more apprenticeships. Of the 50 readers who voted in the unscientific online poll, 84% agreed. For an employer weighing up a first-year apprentice, the more useful question is what public money covers now, and what each party says it would change.
Apprenticeship Boost is the main payment. Work and Income pays employers $500 a month per eligible apprentice, plus GST for registered employers, for up to 12 months. The apprentice must be less than 12 months into their apprenticeship and enrolled in a qualification the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), the Crown agency that funds tertiary training, has listed.
Employers have to apply within 20 days of the apprentice starting, and payments can’t be backdated. Set against wages, the subsidy is a modest share. Employment New Zealand says apprentices aged 20 and over who must complete at least 60 industry training credits a year can be paid the training minimum wage of $19.16 an hour.
A 40-hour week at that rate costs $766.40, or $39,852.80 over a year. A full year of Boost payments, $6,000 before GST, covers about 15% of that.
How the scheme narrowed
Apprenticeship Boost started in August 2020 as a COVID-19 measure and used to pay for up to two years per apprentice. In October 2024 the Government announced that from 1 January 2025 it would cover first-year apprentices only, in targeted fields such as building, agriculture, horticulture and viticulture.
Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds said the change was about “providing employers in critical industries with the certainty to hire and retain first-year apprentices”. Budget 2024 set aside $64.9 million over four years, and the Ministry of Education says the commitment stands until a review in 2027.
Fewer people now qualify. Ministry of Education tables show the scheme supported 41,435 learners in 2022, when second-year apprentices were still covered, and 9,905 in 2025. Counting first-year apprentices only, the number fell from 29,320 to 8,670.
The wider apprentice count has fallen too, though not as far. Education Counts, the ministry’s statistics site, recorded 59,720 apprentices in 2025, down 14% on 2024, with new entrants down 24%. It says that’s still the sixth-highest annual count since 2011.
The ministry links the fall to building activity, which dropped rapidly in 2023 and 2024, and to the 2025 eligibility changes. It also notes that employers need enough work on to take learners on, because learners are less productive than other workers and training uses employer resources.
Retention moved the other way. First-year retention rose from 66% to 71% in 2025, although the five-year completion rate fell three points to 40%.
The Government’s other big trades decision came in Budget 2026. It cancels final-year Fees Free from the end of December 2026 and uses the savings to lift Trades Academy places for secondary students from 10,000 to 20,000 over four years.
What the parties propose
Labour would pay employers $500 a month for the first two years of an apprenticeship from 1 July 2028. From 1 July 2027 it would add five fields, among them road construction and water and sanitary engineering, along with a $1,000 toolbox grant for new apprentices and a mentoring pilot. Labour costs the package at $21 million in 2027/28, rising to $71.5 million in 2030/31.
National’s 47-point small business plan doesn’t propose changes to Apprenticeship Boost. It targets paperwork instead, promising that digital competency records and electronic supervisor sign-off will be accepted consistently across apprenticeships.
The Greens would abolish the training wage, which would leave the adult minimum of $23.95 an hour as the floor for apprentices aged 20 and over. They would also give apprentices a $2,000 equipment grant, pay employers a $2,000 completion bonus and add $30 million a year for Māori and Pasifika-led training.
ACT’s small business package would freeze the adult minimum wage for three years. It would also create a separate training wage, set at 60% of the adult minimum, for workers under 20 in their first 12 months with an employer.
B2B News found no published apprenticeship funding policy from NZ First or Te Pāti Māori. The Ministry of Education’s review of the scheme is due in 2027.