The number of apprentices and trainees in the June quarter was 272 000, down 1.4 per cent on 2018, according to new stats from the estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research.

The drop since June 2015 was 9.7 per cent.

And numbers will get worse as declines in commencements flow through the system. There were 184 000 starts in 2015 and 156 000 this year.

But there’s good news

The estimable agency also reports that people who do stick to training are happy with it – 88 per cent of graduates, were satisfied with overall quality.

Up to a point

But of the third of training graduates not employed before they started over a half of them weren’t after they finished. And just two-thirds of graduates “had an improved employment status after training.” Which may lead some of them to wonder why they bothered.