Sainath Reddy Nalla, 31, Coniston: "There are too many people and you are just a number in the uni. We just have to guide ourselves and find a job and there's no say. They don't put you through the recruitment process, you just do your uni, get out of uni and find a job. There's probably not enough money in it, there's not enough direction given to young kids to sort of go into trades anymore."

Matthew Soster, 37, Camden: "You have to get the kids at a younger age interested in doing stuff like that, make them aware of the benefits of having that stuff behind you, what the end result is, and how much you can get paid later in life. They need to get used to a sacrifice to start off with."

Naoise Miscamble, 22, Wollongong: "We need more scholarships and more female scholarships, medicine especially is male dominated and it's hard.

"We need more paid internships or partly paid internships, and job opportunities central to Wollongong not two hours away."

Brianna Rigby, 22, Wollongong: "In any job of the future or any highly qualified job, you have to do an insane amount of work placement and that's free work. Half of my Masters degree is me doing work for another company. Doctors and nurses have to do so much work placement and it's unpaid work."

Kelsey Bartlett, 44, Wollongong: "It's a cross-pollination of everyone. The TAFE is there but there's not a lot of people pulling their kids out of school to pull them off the streets. There's no bodies down on the ground grabbing these kids and saying 'how about this?'"

Kay Wiggins, 78, Woonona: "If there were more internships to get them started - that's what they need to get them started when they do their HSC, more jobs going in that sort of training. Then they're confident they can find a better job. If they could just get the internships started, it will give them the confidence to go out and start.