The National Apprenticeship Service has been doing a few calculations recently, and it's becoming clear that apprenticeships are not only increasing in number, but also becoming increasingly competitive.
If you're thinking of serving a plumbing apprenticeship, for example, you'd better have a shining CV, a sparkling cover letter and the kind of background that's really going to make employers and learning providers sit up and take notice ... because you're going to be up against forty others all after the same apprenticeship.
But then again, if you're after an apprenticeship in, say, animal care, you'd only be up against 25 others.
On the other hand, if you've been watching a certain reality show currently gracing our airwaves - the one we promised ourselves we'd never mention by name here on this blog - you could be forgiven for thinking you'd do a lot better than most of the plonkers there.
In fact, it looks like over a hundred thousand people think they could do a better job because they all applied for a business and administration apprenticeship between February and April this year - even though there were only seven thousand of those apprenticeship on offer.
It's not quite the competition for jobs out there in real life, but it's certainly good training if your apprenticeship doesn't guarantee you a position at the end of your training.
And since more and more people are re-thinking plans to go to university thanks to the enormous amount of finance required not just for tuition fees, but for living expenses in general, it's a pretty safe guess that there's going to be more and more competition for each apprenticeship vacancy in the future.
So it doesn't pay to be slapdash and complacent when applying for an apprenticeship of any kind - as if it ever had been.
Best, then, to concentrate on sharpening up your application skills ... before everybody else does.
