Employers invest in training apprentices in a bid to improve human resources, but the purpose is defeated, as dropout rate is seen to cost Australia almost $12 billion in the next 10 years.

NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli released new figures illustrating the swelling impact of non-completion of apprenticeship in NSW, which provides learning programs for about 30 per cent of Australia's apprentices and trainees. In NSW alone, the amount of loss could be $3.5 billion over the next 10 years.

NSW-commissioned modelling by Deloitte Access Economics has estimated the combined losses in NSW last year at over $180 million. Employers lost $124 million, the state government $33 million and the Commonwealth $26 million in payments and expenses.

Piccoli said these estimates were based on a conservative non-completion rate of 36 per cent.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research has estimated the non-completion rate for trade apprentices at 44 per cent, taking into account apprentices and trainees who change employers during the course of their training.

Piccoli said small and medium businesses and rural areas took the brunt of the high dropout rate as they had more apprentices. He noted more than 80 per cent of NSW apprentices worked in enterprises with 50 employees or less.

More than 90 per cent of employers had less than four apprentices, with almost two-thirds training only one apprentice. Forty-four per cent of businesses with apprentices were outside major cities, while NSW has just 34 per cent of the state's population.

"These employers are doing more than their fair share of apprenticeship training and bearing a disproportionate share of the costs of non-completion," Piccoli observed.

"If no action is taken over the next decade the cost to NSW employers is likely to exceed $1.2 billion. The NSW Government would incur costs in the order of $425 million and the Commonwealth over $260 million."

"These businesses generally don't have a specialised human resource department or the extensive resources larger companies have. Attention should not only be focused on changes at the national level - we must also think locally," stressed Piccoli.

Private employers would suffer most of the costs in the form of productivity loss, as well as administration and other training-related expenses, while the Australian government stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and incentive payments.

Group Training Australia CEO Jim Barron said the high dropout rate has other significant incidental effects aside from costs to employers and governments.

"If a young person drops out of an apprenticeship they're less likely to re-engage, [as is] a small business person [who] has an unhappy experience with an apprentice," said Barron.

He told The Australian the large-scale recruitment of apprentices without retention strategies was a false economy. "We have record sign-ups but we don't have record completions."

Piccoli is urging his counterparts in the state, territory and Commonwealth to look into existing apprenticeship programs and make apprenticeship completion a national priority.