Industry News
Talk of widespread redundancies and major increases in unemployment rates have been long circulating since the pandemic came into play. The team at Nexus have also been preparing for these predicted changes, to make sure we can help wherever we can.
However, things have not been as clear cut and straight forward thus far. According to Work and Income, there have indeed been an increase in the amount of Job Seeker benefit applications since March. However, not all of these are due to recent job losses.
According to economist, Brad Olsen of Infometrics, there has been a continued slow rise of people accessing the Job Seeker support (or Covld-19) payments, meaning that the government’s support for workers is keeping more people employed than many Initially feared.
1.71 million jobs have been covered by the wage subsidy so far, which has given businesses the space to determine how to adjust their business operations without having to jump straight to redundancies. Brad Olsen suggests that, although job losses are still mounting, NZ has so far avoided the incredible spikes in unemployment that other countries have seen.
Despite forecasts that unemployment will reach 8 or 9 percent as the wage subsidy crutch is removed – the job market in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch has been described as “pretty buoyant” so far. As it is an election year, the Government has got a number of projects it needs to deliver. Some of which include Transmission Gully, the Dunedin Hospital and CityRail in Auckland – all of which, require a skilled workforce.
Which is why finding skilled workers is slightly more difficult to recruit for than we originally expected. However, in saying this – we have definitely still been getting some great candidates coming through our doors some of which we tend to match up to great opportunities almost immediately!