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The Gippsland Apprenticeship Research Project grew out of current debates around skills shortages and the concerns raised by a range of interested stakeholders including local and state government representatives, vocational education and training (VET) teachers, trainers, trade unions, youth workers and educationalists about seemingly high attrition rates among apprentices and trainees. This project set out to establish what the regional attrition rate was amongst apprentices and trainees, how it compared to the state average, whether stakeholders and those in training had similar views of the factors which contributed to this non-completion, and what those factors are. Research was mainly focused on the four industry sectors of construction, engineering, hospitality and retail. These were chosen as representative of both apprentice experiences (construction and engineering) and trainee experiences (hospitality and retail) and all four industries are well represented in training figures for the region. The main issues expressed by apprentices and trainees as contributing to their non-completion or dissatisfaction with their apprenticeship/traineeship were: being treated as cheap labour; lack of appropriate supervision in the workplace; problems with poor or inappropriate training; bullying and abuse in the workplace; and low wages. A surprising finding of this research was that the factors which stakeholders, apprentices and trainees identified as factors contributing to non-completion are also of significant concern to both those currently in training and those who have completed their training.