What good is a $65 billion pipeline if nobody can fit the pipes?

The bottleneck is now labour, not planning

New Zealand has spent years arguing about how to plan infrastructure. The uncomfortable truth emerging from the trades is that planning is no longer the binding constraint. People are. Infometrics forecasts about 1,450 plumbing, gasfitting and drainlaying jobs will need to be filled over the next year as older workers retire, others cross the Tasman, and construction work picks up again.

The demand is real and dated. MBIE’s National Construction Pipeline Report 2025 forecasts activity recovering to $65.4 billion by 2030, with infrastructure spending climbing from $16.9 billion in 2024 to $19.6 billion, and more than 200,000 homes consented over the next six years. Every one of those projects needs a licensed plumber, gasfitter or drainlayer. There is no way to consent a house without one, and no way to import the work.

The pipeline is drying up, not filling

Against that demand, supply is moving backwards. Only 17% of plumbing businesses currently take on apprentices, according to Master Plumbers chief executive Greg Wallace, and across construction the figure sits at just 10 to 15%. New apprentice numbers dropped 27% in 2026 against 2025, and 2025 had already halved from prior years.

The workforce carrying the load is old. The Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board’s 2025 annual report counts 15,236 authorised tradespeople, but the average age of a certifying plumber, gasfitter or drainlayer is 49, and around 1,000 people on the tools are over 65 and looking to retire soon. In May 2024, Master Plumbers noted 38% of the workforce was aged 55 and over.

Rhiannon Jarvis, owner-operator at Jarvis Plumbing and Gasworks in Lower Hutt, put the stakes plainly: “Every single construction project in New Zealand needs plumbing, gasfitting, and drain laying,” she said, warning it would be “pretty hard” to build the infrastructure and housing needed without enough skilled trades.

Australia is winning the bidding war

The wage gap with Australia is not marginal, it is decisive. Colleen Upton of Hutt Plumbing and Gas described a recently qualified apprentice who “was on early $30 an hour and he walked into $55 an hour” across the Tasman. “We just can’t compete with that.” Ryan Wilson, who moved to Australia in 2024, estimated roughly half his final block course had gone offshore.

The pull is not new. A July 2025 report noted Queensland jobs ahead of the 2032 Olympics were already luring qualified plumbers away, with apprenticeship enrolments at their lowest since 2011 for electricians and halved for plumbers. Jarvis has been advertising for a skilled plumber “pretty constantly for a year and a half” with no result.

Why the recession broke the training tap

The deeper problem is a compounding trap. Wallace is blunt that the first 18 months of an apprenticeship is when it is hard to make money out of a trainee. Upton, who has trained more than 60 apprentices over 34 years, says “it takes five years to bake them” and she was forced to pause taking on new apprentices for 18 months during the downturn, despite receiving three or more CVs a week.

So the recession that killed demand also killed training. Because qualification takes five years, anyone starting today is not fully qualified until 2031, after the forecast peak of construction activity. The Budget 2024 extension of the Apprenticeship Boost scheme, worth $65 million over four years, was meant to offset that cost, yet the 2026 data still shows a 27% drop. The subsidy was overwhelmed by the economics.

Gasfitting is the crisis within the crisis

Gasfitting is worse still. In February 2025, Wallace reported New Zealand had only 2,664 qualified gasfitters but needed 38% more, with trainee numbers dropped through the floor and an average age of 47. He called the country’s 14 dispersed training providers, none doing gas well, “ludicrous” for the population size. People stopped training in gas over the politicisation of natural gas and fears it would run out, a direct casualty of the energy transition debate.

The pool the industry ignores

One partial fix is being left on the table. Of about 14,000 people in the three trades, only 120 are women, four of them working for Upton, who argues plenty of interested women never even get an interview. A February 2026 ConstrucTrend survey of 357 employers also found technical skills are strong but planning, quoting and business capability are weak, hurting the small firms that carry the sector.

The window to influence the 2028 to 2030 workforce has largely closed. That leaves immigration settings and the speed of credentialing overseas-qualified tradespeople as the only levers with meaningful effect in the next two to three years. As Wallace puts it, “we aren’t good at infrastructure planning. We’re also not good at workforce planning to meet those peaks.” Developers pricing projects for 2029 should budget for scarce, expensive trades, because the pipeline that would have fixed it was emptied two years ago.

Sources

• Plumber shortage: Not enough people in the pipeline to fill the gaps (2026-08-24)
• Inside New Zealand’s shrinking building and construction industry (2026-07-12)
• Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board Annual Report 2025 (2025-03-31)
• New Zealand well short of qualified gasfitters (2025-02-12)
• Trades apprentice numbers down, workforce shortage warnings (2025-07-16)
• Master Plumbers Applauds Decision To Retain Apprenticeship Boost Funding (2024-05-30)
• New national survey reveals hidden skills gaps shaping NZ’s construction workforce (2026-02-10)