Shannon Barlow: Where the power sits in the labour market

Economy Watch

The balance of power in the labour market sits firmly with employers, with a big rise in job applicants over the past year chasing a significantly diminished number of jobs, says Frog Recruitment Managing Director Shannon Barlow.

"For our recruitment agency, we're probably experiencing around three to four times the volume of applications compared with last year. And that's across the board, across different industries and job types," Barlow says in the latest episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast.

"At the extremes, it can be even more than that. So for some business support [roles], other industries like supply chain or operational roles where we were happy to get, say, 30 applications, we'd be celebrating last year. Now those can reach up to nearly 300 applications and that's within a week. So you have to pull the ad so that you've got the time to get through all those applications."

"I'd say with the higher volumes of applications as well, I think the biggest factor isn't actually about there being more people looking for work...the big factor is there are less jobs available. So there's less than half the number of job postings in the market today compared with 2022," says Barlow.

Her comments come ahead of the June quarter labour market data from Statistics NZ, due out of Wednesday, August 7 and expected to show an increase in unemployment.

Barlow previously appeared on the Of Interest podcast in August 2022 at a time when the border had just fully reopened following its closure due to Covid-19, and the balance of power in the labour market was firmly in favour of job seekers, or workers.

Since then there has been a massive surge of inward migration, which hit a record high for a calendar year of 126,000 in 2023, according to Statistics NZ. Despite this Barlow says it hasn't solved skill shortages.

"The problem is that quantity doesn't always equal quality. There've been problems with the new accredited employer programme and the new government is still working through changes to those immigration settings. So we haven't got it quite right yet. So although we've refilled the talent pool, we haven't necessarily attracted the right people to be able to cover our areas of skill shortages;" says Barlow.

"Plus we might have had record migration, but we've also had record numbers of Kiwis leaving New Zealand this year."

Statistics NZ's latest figures show a net loss of 2,000 people due to migration during May.

In the podcast audio Barlow also talks about the regions were job seekers are really feeling the pinch, and regions where job listings are actually increasing, how and why some workers are having to take pay cuts, how the labour market has got harder for graduate or entry level roles, what the biggest challenge is for employers now, lingering effects of Covid-19 including attitudes and expectations for working from home, whether she thinks the jobs market has bottomed out yet, and more.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.