Political opinions and scrappy debates aside, I truly believe we are seeing many positives to New Zealand’s COVID-19 response. It is too easy to read dramatic headlines, complain about how tough we are doing it, jump on the Mike Hosking bandwagon and bag almost everything BUT I want to focus on the bright side.
What are we seeing and hearing?
Steady growth: We are seeing growth across both temporary and permanent recruitment in the Government sector. More noticeably we have seen a big increase in hourly rate contracting and fixed term agreements in response to trying to minimise costs.
Shorter weeks: As we are seeing a number of our Government partners compete for senior talent while being restrained by strict salary budgets, there has been a noticeable increase in the budgeted salary or hourly rate to be split over four days. This has been appealing to both clients and candidates.
Increase in admin and support roles: The last 12 months have been tough in this space across both temporary and permanent roles. We continue to see a significant upward trend in new roles coming through.
Building and construction: We continue to see and hear the pressure around lifting the industry as a whole - The Construction Accord are doing some great things through collaboration in this space! Around 4,800 new jobs a year will be created in construction in the years to 2028 according to the Government’s medium-to-long term employment outlook.
Unemployment rates are reducing: Filled job numbers increased over the last 12 months. Unsurprisingly, the biggest increases have been:
- health care and social assistance – up 8,816 jobs
- construction – up 8,563
- public administration and safety – up 7,630
Where are the jobs?
2021 is seeing jobs in New Zealand dispersed quite widely around the country. The three biggest job centres are, in order:
- Auckland
- Canterbury (including Christchurch) - job growth in Canterbury has slowed lately with the continued wind-down of the rebuild following the 2011 earthquakes there
- Wellington
However…there are almost as many jobs in the regions, including Waikato (based around the city of Hamilton), Bay of Plenty (Tauranga), Otago (Dunedin and Queenstown) and around Nelson. The fastest growing region for jobs recently has been Manawatu-Wanganui (Palmerston North).
Infrastructure renewal is creating jobs (great update from MBIE)
New Zealand is investing heavily in infrastructure right now to modernise existing assets, prepare for climate change and to help grow the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Government in 2020 announced a $15 billion surge of infrastructure projects in a New Zealand Upgrade Programme, with special emphasis on roading and transport, hospitals and schools.
This is in addition to already unprecedented infrastructure investment. An estimated $129 billion is expected to be spent on capital projects between 2019 and 2029.
New housing developments are also underway across New Zealand, needing skills in land development, traffic and water infrastructure.
So, let's focus on the positives and how we as our team of five million can continue our COVID-19 recovery response and get our little country back on track. If you are keen to chat about anything mentioned above (including you, Mike), please feel free to reach out any time on 0211471825 or kelly@tribegroup.com
Credits: Careers.govt.nz, MBIE and Stats NZ
