The number of businesses who say it is getting harder to find the skilled workers they need is well above the long-term average in New Zealand. Source: The New Zealand Herald
Forestry, machinery manufacturing, construction, telecommunications and computer systems design were the industries with the highest levels of hard-to-fill vacancies – all above 40%.
New Zealand’s Institute of Economic Research reports, and a survey by Statistics New Zealand shed some light on what they are likely to do about it.
In the institute’s latest quarterly survey of business opinion, 29% of the firms surveyed said getting skilled or specialist labour is harder than it was three months ago.
That is little changed from its average 28% level over the previous four quarters, but compares with a long-run average of 16%.
“Labour is hard to find but not getting much harder,” NZIER principal economist Shamubeel Eaqub said.
“This suggests the pressures on wages is increasing but is not yet acute.”
Firms report less difficulty filling unskilled vacancies than skilled ones but the trend is one of increasing difficulty.
And labour is slowly creeping up as a factor firms cite as limiting their ability to increase production.
Meanwhile, Statistics New Zealand’s annual business operations survey of 36,000
Businesses found 31% reporting vacancies that were hard to fill, particularly for tradespeople.
The trend has been rising since 2009.
When asked what actions they had taken as a result, 39% of the businesses reporting hard-to-fill vacancies said they increased salaries, 35% trained less qualified recruits, 26% brought in contractors, 23% recruited overseas and 29% stepped up training.
Only 51% of the firms considered all their staff to have all the skills required to do their jobs, and for trades people the proportion falls to 44%.
