The impact of wages on the probability of completing an apprenticeship or traineeship

• Tom Karmel, Peter Mlotkowski
• National Centre for Vocational Education Research

Read the full text

09 September 2010Making use of the NCVER Apprentice and Trainee Destination Survey, this paper focuses on wages and the impact they have on the decision not to continue with an apprenticeship or traineeship.

The broad conclusion is that increasing training wages would have little effect on completion rates. For apprentices, it is the premium associated with becoming a tradesperson that counts, not training wages. For females in non-trade traineeships, there is no relationship between wages and completion rates. It is only for males in non-trade traineeships for whom increasing training wages would make a difference to completion rates. However, for this group there is, on average, only a modest premium to completion. This finding raises the question of whether traineeships in some occupations—sales for example—are contributing to increased skill levels in any substantive manner.