Ask a salon owner in Australia whether she is taking on an apprentice this year, and listen for the pause before she answers.

It is not that she has gone cold on young people. Jen has been training apprentices since she was about 21 and still loves it. Sam has had apprentices who became some of the best people she has ever worked with. The pause is about everything sitting underneath that. A wage that climbs on a timeline while the skill is still building. Eighteen months of your time before any of it comes back. Support that used to exist for owners and quietly stopped. And a salon floor that, with a smaller team, no longer needs the person who once kept the whole thing moving.

So the industry has ended up somewhere strange. Owners who genuinely want to train are turning young people away, week after week, because they cannot see the landscape they would be sending them into. Which leaves the question this episode opens on and never quite answers. If nobody is training them, who is cutting your hair in twenty years?

What we cover

• Why Australian salon owners are turning apprentices away
• The support that used to exist for training and does not anymore
• Wages rising while the skill set is still building
• What a Cert II at TAFE is delivering, and what it is not
• The myth that owners are getting kickbacks that cover the cost
• Why apprentices worked in a big salon and stopped working in a small one
• Uni students do unpaid placement, hairdressers pay for theirs
• Committing to three years when you cannot see your own next three
• What happens to the young people knocking on the door

Neither of them has the answer. Both of them would really like one.

FAQs

Why are salon owners not taking on apprentices anymore?

The cost is front loaded and the return has moved. Wages rise on a set timeline while the skill set is still building, and the first 18 months are almost entirely the owner's time.

Is there an apprentice shortage in the Australian hairdressing industry?

Fewer salons are taking apprentices on, so fewer are coming through and fewer are staying. Owners are turning young people away because they cannot see the industry they would be sending them into.

Do salon owners get paid to take on an apprentice?

Not in any meaningful way in hairdressing. Incentives have grown in other trades, mostly construction, and those employers also pay a much higher apprentice wage.

Mentioned in this episode:

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