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New hotspots for skill shortages

By Lawrence Johnston

ACUTE skill shortages continue to exist in many areas of the economy. Making this point in a speech to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce last month, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe said extra trades and professions were likely to be added to the immediate and long-term skill shortage lists.
For the immediate skill shortage list, these include plasterers, painters and small engine mechanics. The existing list includes more than 130 occupations such as builders, dentists, electrical engineering technicians, foremen for roading infrastructure, heavy vehicle drivers, and IT specialists.
For the long-term skill shortage list - which provides a pathway to residence - hot spots include health professionals and a number of trades such as electricians, IT professionals and secondary teachers.
New additions are likely to include environmental scientists and civil engineering technicians, urban and regional planners, and line mechanics.
Such likely additions are the result of the latest biannual review of the two lists.
Mr Cunliffe said that a more proactive approach was now used for updating these lists. Besides responding to the shortages that industry had directly notified the government about, it was now utilising labour market data that it holds on immediate and longer-term shortages, to identify opportunities for action.
He had asked Department of Labour officials to undertake a review of both high-skilled and lower-skilled temporary work policy.
"It is important to take a strategic view across the skills spectrum so that we can clearly identify where immigration responses are appropriate. I am expecting to take proposals to Cabinet shortly that outline initial findings and a pathway for future policy development," he said.
Employment Minister David Benson-Pope would be taking a paper to Cabinet shortly on a number of talent initiatives, including possible immigration initiatives.
"This is a medium-term package aimed at developing and sustaining a system that focuses on the talented and skilled people we need, where such people are and how we can compete to attract and retain them," Mr Cunliffe said.
In the latest Institute of Economic Research Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion:

A net 41 per cent of firms reported difficulty finding skilled staff in the March 2007 quarter. This was up from a net 29 per cent in the December 2006 quarter.
A net 21 per cent of firms reported difficulty finding unskilled staff in the March 2007 quarter, up strongly from a net 11 per cent in the December 2006 quarter, and
A shortage of labour was the main constraint on expansion for 22 per cent of firms at March 2007. This figure is up from 19 per cent measured in December 2006 and is the highest result since June 2005.

The most recent Department of Labour labour market outlook said conditions were expected to stay tight in the coming year. The near record low unemployment rate had now remained below four per cent for eleven quarters, Mr Cunliffe said.