Going spare

As unemployment rises, highly skilled personnel across the country are trying to turn their redundancy into new beginnings.

- DIONNE CHRISTIAN

Every other day, it seems, there's news of more job cuts or business closures, kicking off in 2023 with a swathe of redundancies in the public sector. News outlets have tried to pull together accurate figures of public service redundancies - estimating close to 10,000 - but the government says actual figures were much lower. And there are no estimates - disputed or otherwise - of jobs lost in the private sector.

However, there are two certainties. First, the impact on a person who loses their job can cut deep; second, the job market they've unwittingly found themselves in is tough.

How tough? Seek NZ says job ads fell 2% between April and May, and the year-on-year slide is 8%. While the decline has slowed over the past two years, applications for each job have risen by 2% in the past year and are now at a record high.

Seek NZ's Rob Clark says the job market is “bumping along the bottom” - not worsening, but also not improving significantly. Anecdotally, employers tell of advertising jobs and having 300 people apply for one position. That's not surprising given there were 156,000 New Zealanders out of work in March and unemployment has been rising since 2022, up from 3.3% to 5.1%.

Correspondingly, the proportion of the working-aged population still in work has fallen, down to 67.2% early this year, from a high of 69.8% in 2023.

The impact of job losses across New Zealand is also apparent in the number of applications for KiwiSaver funds on hardship grounds. From last July to this month, 44,360 people withdrew money from KiwiSaver for hardship reasons, up from 32,480 in the previous financial year.

Behind these figures are real Kiwis, trying to stitch their lives back together.

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