Kia ora,

It seems crazy that we are starting to think about Christmas holidays and how we are going to spend the summer break. After the year most of Aotearoa has faced, this break is one we are all looking forward to!

2024 has been characterised by (purposefully) stifling interest rates and significant budget cutbacks in both the private and public sectors.  This has seen many businesses suffering through the year, and many households facing increasing expenses while incomes may have been significantly reduced or disrupted. It does feel like we have been in this recessionary environment for nearly two years.

The labour market is a key part of the economic equation and a dynamic instrument which reacts to the macro levers pulled.  We have seen unemployment move from 3.2% in 2023 to its current 4.6%,  as we head to a forecast 5.5% level expected by mid-2025.  This increase in unemployment has seen some labour market groups more affected than others through this transition. Youth, the less skilled, and to a certain extent remote workers, are all bearing the brunt of the changes. Public sector workers have faced harsher cuts than the general trend.

There are some green shoots in the areas of dairy farming, tourism and builders of large-scale infrastructure, but other than that it has been a very tight year in the employment game. Interestingly, we are yet to see any significant shifts in the labour market due to AI improvements, but the general economic downturn may be masking some of this transition. The recent OCR cut by the RBNZ has helped sentiment somewhat (albeit mainly outside the Wellington region!), with hopefully more cuts to come.

As Australia’s labour market conditions seem to be improving compared to NZ, we are seeing an increase in the migration of skills across the ditch, especially so in the young professional market.

At Find we are working hard to get alongside candidates frustrated with the progress (or lack thereof in the labour market) and those employers who are struggling to do more with less resources.

My pick for some trends for 2025 are – businesses will start to look to hire one or two new staff that can shift the dial and take pressure of the existing staff, that there will be significant renewed investment in business transformation and there will be a standardisation of hybrid working.

My hope is that we all get to the end of the year with our sanity intact, having looked out for each other and are able to reflect on getting through one of the toughest economic periods NZ has seen for a long time.

Finally, a big thanks to the Find family for their continuous hard work and resilience. Thank you to our clients who have supported us through this period, & a sympathetic nod to all those candidates out there waiting this out.

Read our full State of the Market report right here.