Country’s biggest job advertising website reports 19% growth in jobs, after remarkable economic recovery in December
Job vacancies are booming in New Zealand since the country contained an outbreak of the coronavirus with a hard lockdown in early 2020.
The country’s biggest job advertising site, Seek, has reported a 19% national growth in jobs advertised in the final quarter of 2020, and the number of job ads on the website has bounced back to nearly pre-pandemic levels.
The sectors posting the most vacancies included IT and communications, manufacturing, transport & logistics and trades & services. Jobs in customer-facing roles have taken the hardest hit.
Stats NZ said the third-quarter growth was the strongest in New Zealand’s modern history, coming off the back of an 11% drop in the June quarter.
Janet Faulding, the general manager of Seek NZ said almost all regions of the country experienced a substantial rise in new job ads, compared with the previous quarter. In Auckland the numbers rose 24%, in Wellington 20% and in Canterbury 17%.
“Despite such a unique and challenging year for the labour market it is really encouraging to end quarter four 2020 just 7% lower than 2019. It is a real testament to the resilience and hard work of so many New Zealanders to end the year positively.”
Across metro areas, professional and consumer services faced the biggest challenge after a decline of 14% and 24% year-on-year respectively, said Faulding.
“When we experience a difficult economic outlook, businesses tend to hold off in recruiting these sorts of roles and less international tourism has had a significant impact,” she said.
New Zealand closed its borders to international visitors in March of 2020, leading to a shortage of foreign workers in many industries.
The hospitality and farming sectors have reported thousands of job vacancies, while the agriculture and horticulture industries say they’re short of 40,000 workers.
Leave A Comment