Hiring Intentions Just Jumped To A Net 23 Percent. Skilled People Are Already Harder To Find.

A net 23 percent of New Zealand firms say they plan to take on more staff over the next three months, up from a net minus 1 percent in the June quarter. That is the hiring intentions reading from NZIER's Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion, released on 6 October, as reported by ANZ and Westpac. In the same survey, firms said skilled people were getting harder to find, with ANZ's figures showing the ease of finding skilled labour falling from minus 9 to minus 15.

Put that next to unemployment at 5.6 percent and applications per job ad still climbing, and you get a market where plenty of people are looking for work while employers say the skilled ones are scarce. If you have an IT, digital, finance, risk or corporate hire coming up before Christmas or early in the new year, that combination is worth planning around now rather than in January.

What the survey actually says

Confidence was the headline, with a net 40 percent of firms expecting the general economic outlook to improve, up from a net 14 percent last quarter. Their own trading was flatter, with a net 1 percent reporting lower activity over the September quarter, and a net 5 percent said they had cut staff over the same period. Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon called it "a wide gap between hopes and reality".

Hiring intentions are where it got interesting. BNZ's economists said employment intentions had "skyrocketed" and seldom get stronger than this, while also pointing out that nobody is forecasting jobs growth anywhere near what those intentions would suggest at face value. Their read is that difficulty finding the right people may be part of the reason actual hiring has not lifted as much as planned hiring. Gordon made a similar point, that firms keep saying workers are getting harder to find even though unemployment has been rising for a couple of years.

The hard data is moving more slowly than the mood, with Stats NZ's employment indicators showing seasonally adjusted filled jobs up 0.2 percent in August to 2.36 million. That is steady progress rather than a rush, but it does not take a rush to change who has options.

Busy inboxes, short shortlists

SEEK's August Employment Report showed applications per job ad rising 0.9 percent in July, the sharpest lift in 18 months, and Stats NZ puts underutilisation at 13.8 percent, or 440,000 people. That looks like a buyer's market, and for a generalist role it often is.

For a senior data engineer, a finance systems lead, a cyber specialist or a risk manager who has worked through a regulator review, the picture is different. The pile of applications is big, but the number of people who can genuinely do the job has not grown much, and most of them are employed and in no hurry. We wrote about pulling a usable shortlist out of a big pile here.

When a lot of firms decide to hire at roughly the same time, that second group feels it first. Good candidates end up running two or three processes at once, and the business that takes three weeks to line up a second interview often loses out to the one that managed it in a week.

The calendar is fuller than it looks

There is a lot packed into the next eight weeks. Stats NZ's September quarter CPI comes out on 22 October, the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Review is on 28 October with the OCR currently at 2.75 percent, the next labour market figures land on 4 November, and the general election is on 7 November. After that it is the run into Christmas, and a lot of New Zealand switches off until late January.

We covered how to decide which hires keep going through the election in a recent post, but the point this week is slightly different. If a big share of firms plan to hire next quarter and plenty of them are waiting until the election has passed, there is a good chance a lot of that demand arrives in the same few weeks in late November and again in early February. Having your process ready before then puts you ahead of the queue.

It is also taking longer to fill roles in the first place. Betul Genc, who heads the Adecco Group in Australia and New Zealand, told HRD last week that their usual time to fill of 14 to 28 days has stretched to six to eight weeks. Add notice periods and the Christmas break to that, and a role you want filled by February really needs to be moving by early November.

What we would do

The single most useful thing is getting sign-off sorted before the job ad goes live, including the salary range. When a strong candidate slips away in a tighter market, in our experience it usually happens in the gap between "we like them" and "we can make an offer", and that gap is often an approval or a budget conversation that could have happened earlier.

It also helps to agree the interview stages up front and keep them tight. Two well-run stages with the right people in the room will tell you what you need for most IT, finance and corporate roles, and it is far easier to hold a strong candidate's interest over ten days than over a month. If you had a good runner-up in a recent process, keep in touch, because in a few months they may be exactly who you need.

Finally, if the work cannot wait for a permanent hire to work through a notice period and the summer break, a contractor can carry it in the meantime without locking you into a decision before you are ready.

What this means for hiring managers

Hiring intentions are a survey of plans rather than a count of hires, and plenty of those plans will shift with the election result and the OCR. Even so, the direction is clear enough, with confidence up, more firms wanting to add people, and skilled people in IT, digital, finance, risk and corporate support already the hard part to find. The businesses that get their approvals, pay range and process sorted in October and early November will have first go at those people.

If you are planning an IT, digital, finance or corporate hire in Auckland or Wellington over the next few months and want a straight read on how deep the market is for that role, talk to the Find team.

Sources: NZIER Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion, September quarter 2026 (6 October 2026); ANZ QSBO commentary (6 October 2026); Westpac IQ, Michael Gordon (6 October 2026); BNZ Economy Watch (6 October 2026); Stats NZ Employment indicators, August 2026; Stats NZ Labour market statistics, June 2026 quarter; SEEK NZ Employment Report, August 2026; Reserve Bank of New Zealand; Electoral Commission; HRD New Zealand (7 October 2026).

Cover photo: Francisco Anzola, CC BY 2.0.