Data pertaining to Australia's publicly funded vocational education and training (VET) sector in 1999 were reviewed. Both national-level and state/territory-level data on the following topics were reviewed: VET providers and delivery systems; student characteristics; enrollment trends; program costs and financing mechanisms; and apprentices and trainees involved in work-based VET. The following were among the review's key findings: (1) in 1999, publicly funded VET providers delivered courses, subjects, and training packages to nearly 1.65 million students, which represented a 7.3% increase over 1998 VET enrollment levels; (2) students residing in capital cities and other metropolitan areas averaged 217 hours of VET each, which was 50 hours more than students from rural and remote locations; (3) the most popular VET subject areas were business/administration/economics, engineering and surveying, and services/hospitality/transportation; (4) more than two-thirds of training activity resulted in successful completions; (5) most training (86.4% of annual hours) was funded from recurrent state and territory allocations for VET and commonwealth funds disbursed by the Australian National Training Authority; (6) 1999 operating expenditures on publicly funded VET remained essentially at the 1998 level (just under $4 billion); and (7) an estimated 259,900 Australians were undertaking apprenticeships or traineeships in 1999. (Contains 49 tables/figures.) (MN)