Tradie envy: these are the skills we wished we had the most

Please note that the information in this article was based on trends from 2017 and may now be outdated. 

Tradies are making us green with envy with their large toolkit of handyman knowledge. As the price of renovating goes up, Aussies are starting to see the value in having these trade skills. A recent survey conducted by jobs site ServiceSeeking.com.au interviewed 1,700 users who revealed that many of us wish we had taken a different career path…

Which tradies make us jealous?

In response to the question “What trade skills do you most wish you had?”,

• 37% of people said Electrical,
• 24% said Landscaping,
• 20% said Plumbing,
• 11% said House Painting, and
• 8% said Tiling.

Going further, respondents also answered which trade seemed the hardest, with Electricians and Plumbers being identified as the hardest trades to master.

The DIY jobs we most WISH we could do:

• 24% wish they could re-tile their own bathroom
• 21% wish they could install cabinetry
• 19% wish they could build a deck
• 16% wished they could paint a wall
• 10% wish they could unclog a blocked drain and
• 9.6% wished they could fix a blown fuse box.

Most Hated DIY Job:

It should come as no surprise that the most hated DIY job was unclogging the toilet, with 40% of respondents identifying this most unsavoury task.

Reasons why we HATE DIY:

• 40% answered, “Doesn’t turn out how you picture it.”
• 36% said DIY is just time-consuming
• 19% complained that DIY was physically exhausting, and
• 4% don’t like getting dirty.

It should come as no surprise then that find-a-tradie sites like ServiceSeeking.com.au have seen more than 2 million Australians flock to them. With the average job posted on the site worth around $1,400, it seems that tradesmen are also benefitting from Australians' hatred of DIY and the fact that there is a constant flow of new customers and work available. In fact, more than $ 1 billion in work has been won through the website, making tradies a very in-demand commodity.

The data is from a survey of more than 1,700 users of ServiceSeeking.com.au in September 2017, an online services marketplace connecting customers with over 150,000 local businesses.