Best apprenticeship to do

Mechanic

Best or worst?!

Dry stone wall repair / building ?

Plenty of them falling down around farms and public areas

If I was going back I'd be looking at an electrical or instrumentation apprentice.And get a nice handy job in a pharma factory or the like.

Have yet to meet a brickie or plasterer in his 50s who's body isn't partially wrecked.

Lift Engineer

It doesn’t matter what trade you do at the moment there’s that many opportunities in construction but surely you have some leanings in one way or another towards one over the other. If you are going self employed, carpentry is probably one of the dearest to get into tools wise, electrical seems to have the most young lads entering it. Block laying or plastering are probably the cheapest in and you can make decent coin . Whatever you pick think of the weather, your back and whether you want to be on sites or in drinking tea with an 80 year old while your fixing a leaky cistern. What part of the country are you in?

Yeah. I agree, they're always needed but never go through a boom, even if there's a shortage of them they still get paid regular pay.

I just thought it would be really useful on a farm... fixing stuff, buying broken machinery and fixing it (properly). I sort of misread the OP and thought he meant which skill would be most useful on the farm.

Bit limiting for a farmer though? Lots of travel unless close to a major source of work.

Same as that - young lads here will do spark or maybe plumber and after that nothing! Brickies will be going to work in a Ferrari in 10 or 20 years time!

And they’ll be coming home with a Zimmer frame!!!!

listen (or look at) the older fellas that have done it and you’ll see for yourself.

electrician or plumbing work will generally keep you close enough to home (& farm) and there’s always nixers and there’s inside work for wet days.

All of the construction trades are in demand.

Most young lads going for electrician, its defo the cleanest, driest and lots of doors open to work in pharma and instrumentation.

Blocklayers and plasters cannot be got, its a boom, they can name their price. Aging profile of the guys at it, no-one young fancies getting into it. Definitely hard on the body. Liklihood of a long boom for these guys. Its a trade where the expected output might have to reduce to make it easier pn the body but the actual price paid keep increasing as they're now so rare.

Plumbing another great trade, always in demand, always repair and maintenance work available.

Can't go wrong with carpentry either.

If you're within a reasonable commute to the city there's a never-ending requirement for trades.

Would an auto electrician be in demand for the maintenance of Electric Vehicles

Electrican, instrumentation, plumber, refrigeration, would be my advice and are licenced , always Maintainance work with those trades, a lot of the other trades are dependant on the boom/bust cycle, I'm a carpenter/cabinetmaker and I enjoy it, but a properly fitted door or wood trim will last a lifetime, with no callback for maintenance .