If you run a trades business on the Sunshine Coast and you can't find staff, you're not alone. The shortage is real, but the reason might not be what you think.

It's not just "no tradies left." It's that you're competing for them with the biggest infrastructure project boom Australia has seen in years. And most Coast tradies have an option you might not be playing to.

Here's what's actually going on.

The national picture

Trade job ads have grown by around 3% nationally in the last 12 months. That sounds modest until you look at specific categories. Demand for operators and drivers is up nearly 6%. Civil construction roles are up significantly. Specialised trades like electrical, plumbing, and carpentry are all running tight.

Everyone's hiring. Everyone's competing for the same skilled people. The pool of qualified tradies hasn't grown nearly as fast as the demand for them, so wages have been climbing and businesses are getting more desperate.

For the typical Coast trades business, that means a bigger pile of competitors fighting for fewer tradies. The maths is brutal.

The Brisbane factor

Here's the bit most Coast businesses underestimate. You're not just competing with other local businesses. You're competing with massive infrastructure projects in Brisbane that can pay more, often a lot more.

Brisbane's preparation for the 2032 Olympics has triggered billions in road, rail, and venue construction. Cross River Rail. Logan and Gold Coast highway upgrades. Stadium works. The civil and trade contractors winning those projects pay top dollar to keep skilled labour on site, because the project budgets can absorb it.

A carpenter or electrician in Caboolture or Bribie Island can take a 6am ute drive into Brisbane each morning and earn $20 to $30 more an hour than they'd earn on the Coast. The Brisbane builds are sucking up a chunk of Southeast Queensland's skilled trades, and Coast businesses are feeling the squeeze.

If you're competing on pay alone, you're going to lose. The infrastructure projects have deeper pockets than most local trades businesses can match.

Why some Coast businesses are still winning

The good news is that pay isn't the only thing tradies care about. And the businesses on the Coast that are still finding skilled people are winning on something pay can't easily fix.

Lifestyle.

The tradies who live on the Coast chose to live on the Coast for a reason. Many of them moved here from Brisbane or Sydney specifically to escape the long commutes, the dense traffic, the city pace. The idea of doing a daily 5am drive down the Bruce Highway, often in stop-start traffic for two hours each way, isn't appealing.

Those tradies are reachable. They've got a job. They might be earning more in Brisbane. But they're quietly knackered, missing their kids' sport, getting home at 7pm with nothing left in the tank.

If you can show them a Coast-based job with reasonable hours, a 15-minute commute, and the chance to knock off at 3:30 on a Friday with the rest of the team, you've got a pitch that pay alone can't match.

What this looks like in practice

Let's make this concrete. A 15-second video of your crew at a Coast job site, knocking off mid-afternoon, ute pulling up at the local servo for a cold drink before heading home. Footage of one of your tradies arriving at his kid's footy training at 4:30pm. A short clip of the boss saying "yeah, half-day Fridays standard, summer hours, we look after the team."

That's the kind of content that interrupts a Brisbane-commuting tradie's scroll. He's seen it after a 90-minute crawl up the Pacific Motorway. He's about to walk in the door late. His missus is annoyed. He's looking at his phone for some kind of escape.

And he sees a Coast crew, finished at 3:30, looking relaxed.

That does more than a pay-rise pitch ever could. He's not getting that lifestyle in Brisbane no matter what they pay him.

What you have to do differently

For this to work, you need to actually show the lifestyle, not claim it.

Most trades job ads on SEEK say "great team culture" and "work-life balance" and "good hours." Every trades ad in Australia says those things. They've stopped meaning anything.

What works is video that proves it. The crew finishing on time. The team grabbing a beer on a Friday. The boss who actually clocks off at 3pm too. The job site with a clean break for smoko. The relaxed pace.

You can't fake this. If your business is actually a grind, with no Friday early-finishes and no work-life balance, the lifestyle pitch won't work because the videos will look forced. But if you're genuinely a well-run Coast trades business, this is your competitive advantage. You've got something Brisbane can't match.

The distribution part

A video showing the lifestyle is only half the equation. The other half is putting it in front of the right tradies.

Facebook and Instagram ads let you target tradies within 50 kilometres of your business. You can narrow by job title, by interests, by demographics. You can specifically target people who follow trades brands, who've shown interest in trades-related content, who fit the age and location profile of your ideal hire.

A Brisbane-commuting tradie living in Caboolture, scrolling Instagram at 7pm after a brutal drive home, sees your ad. He watches the 15 seconds of your crew knocking off early. He saves the post. Two weeks later, he sees your ad again. By the fourth or fifth time, he's actively considering it. By the sixth, he taps through.

This is how you reach passive talent. Not by yelling about a vacancy. By showing them, repeatedly, that another life is available 60 kilometres up the road.

What about the pay gap

It's a fair question. The Brisbane infrastructure projects can pay 10% to 30% more than Coast trades businesses on a like-for-like basis.

Most tradies, when you ask them, value lifestyle highly enough to take a 10% to 15% pay cut for it. Especially the ones with young kids, the ones with longer commutes already, and the ones who moved to the Coast specifically for the lifestyle.

If your pay is in that ballpark, you're competitive. If you're 25% to 30% below Brisbane rates, you'll struggle to win even on lifestyle. Pay still matters. It just doesn't have to match exactly.

What to do this week

If you're a Coast trades business with an open role and SEEK isn't working, here's the simplest version of a fix.

Film 60 seconds of your actual workday on a phone. The crew, the site, the standards. A wrap-up shot at 3:30 on a Friday with everyone in good spirits. Don't script anything.

Get a quick interview with one of your team. Two minutes max. Why he chose this business over a Brisbane one. Why he stays.

Cut it into a 30 to 45 second clip. Run it as a Facebook and Instagram ad targeted to tradies within 50 kilometres of your business, with a budget of $30 to $50 a day.

Watch what happens. It'll take a few weeks to build momentum, but you'll start seeing applications from the kind of tradies SEEK never sends you.

The takeaway

The Coast trades shortage is real, but the reason isn't just "no tradies." It's that you're competing with the biggest infrastructure boom in Australian history, which has bottomless project budgets and deeper pockets than you.

The businesses winning aren't trying to outbid Brisbane on pay. They're showing tradies the lifestyle Brisbane can't offer. And they're putting that content in front of the people who'd most appreciate it.

Show the lifestyle. Attract the tradie. They can't want it if they don't know you exist.

Want help reaching the right tradies for your Coast trades business? Book a 15-minute call and we'll talk through what would work for you.