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New Zealand - Medium to long term employment outlook up to 2018

22 December 2014

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has released ‘Looking Ahead to 2023’, its medium to long term employment outlook report. The organisation forecasts employment growth to remain above the long-run average in the medium-term (to 2018) but decline afterwards. Growth will be strongest for highly skilled occupations, such as managers and professionals. Construction will be a major driver of employment growth in the medium-term, but decline over the longer-term. Service industries will provide steady employment growth over the entire forecast period.

Elevated net migration has contributed to increasing labour supply, which the organisation expect to absorb much of the strong employment growth in the medium-term. These forecasts are used to inform MBIE's medium-long term policy advice relating to immigration policy settings and priority setting for tertiary education and industry training.

Key points of the report include:

Employment is expected to increase by 240,300 over the 2013-18 period and by about 185,200 over the subsequent five years to 2023. This represents annual employment growth of about 2.1% (or 48,000 on average) and about 1.5% (or about 37,000 on average), respectively.

This employment outlook is based on average annual GDP growth of 3.0% and 2.6% over the 2013-18 and 2018-23 periods, respectively, based on latest available macroeconomic forecasts of the Treasury covering exports, imports and consumption growth.

Strong employment growth in primary processing is forecast for certain manufacturing industries such as machinery and equipment, metal products and in construction-related activities. Service industries, including the health and cultural and personal services sectors will also experience modest to strong employment growth.

Employment growth will be strongest for highly-skilled occupations, including managers and professionals and is projected to account for about 60%.

In a related story reported by the Visayan Daily Star, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) warned recruitment agencies against charging job applicants for New Zealand placement fees.

POEA spokesperson Hans Leo Cacdac said the New Zealand Embassy in the Philippines has validated the existence of New Zealand's Wages Protection Act of 1983 which prohibits employers to “seek or receive any premium in respect of the employment of any person, whether the premium is sought or received from the person employed or proposed to be employed or from any other person”.

Cacdac stated that recruitment agencies found charging or collecting placement fee for deployment of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) to “no placement fee” countries face the cancellation of their license, even for a first offense. Other countries that have prohibition on collection of placement fees are United States of America (H2B visa), Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

To download ‘Looking Ahead to 2023’, click below:

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