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NZ FACES BIG SKILL SHORTAGE

By Lawrence Johnston

THE shortage in supply of skilled workers to meet New Zealand's burgeoning economy, was at the heart of much of what James Buwalda said when speaking to New Zealand Outlook on his visit to the UK last month.

On his first visit to the UK for a year, New Zealand's Secretary of Labour said: "We are facing skill shortages that are greater than at any time in the last 30 to 40 years."

For the people running the businesses affected, the shortages were unprecedented.

He mentioned nurses and the trades.

A recent survey by New Zealand's Labour Department, which he heads, mentioned a particular shortage of automotive electricians, bricklayers, cabinet-makers and fitters and welders. But there is a welter of other skills that are in short supply.

All this was of huge benefit to those who had the right skills to offer. But this "outstanding period" for the country's economy had also enabled many people to move from part to fulltime work.

This had given people many more choices about the way they worked, and the jobs available were much better than their previous ones. "Also, we have many more people who were previously unemployed, who now have real money coming into their households," Mr Buwalda said.

Fuelling these job vacancies was a growth rate in the nation's economy in the past few years of four per cent. This had placed New Zealand among the higher echelons of OECD countries. And unemployment at 3.9 per cent was the second lowest among those countries.

"We are looking at an unemployment rate which has fallen to a level that we wouldn't have expected even as recently as two or three years ago."

New Zealand's "job rich" economy had spawned 280,000 new jobs in the last five years.

"It means that there's been a ten to 14 per cent growth in the number of jobs in that period. It surprised people that year after year the sort of economic growth that we've been having, kept coming," he said.

But the jobless rate had recently been even lower, having been at 3.6 per cent at the end of last year.

On why it had since risen, Mr Buwalda said: "That rise was against a background of even more people entering the workforce. The total number of people employed still grew during that quarter."

Over the next six months, he expected the jobless rate to increase slightly as economic growth softened slightly.