The world is changing rapidly post covid19.
New Zealand has shown the rest of the world how to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, almost completely removing any trace within 49 days of lockdown.
This is now an opportunity for NZ to get its economy up, running and recovering before any other country. As seen globally, jobs in New Zealand were all put on hold during the pandemic lockdown. Advertisements ground to a halt whilst NZ businesses began reviewing their post Covid19 strategy and assessing their 2020-2021 recruitment financial year budgets.
As New Zealand begins life under lockdown level 2 and a new normal being established across the country, we are beginning to see jobs in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch,. These main centres of NZ are where the large Corporate Enterprises are established. As jobs in NZ increase, we can begin to see the shoots of recovery in the economy.
The companies most hard hit were the Small & Medium sized businesses in New Zealand, these make up almost 99% of the 500,000 registered businesses in New Zealand. They are largely NZ owned establishments, so the life blood of the New Zealand economy. Their business confidence and balance sheets may see job vacancies for kiwi workers restricted or at reduced levels for the next 18 months.
The challenge for small business is balancing the books and ensuring all their work tasks are completed to stay afloat or grow. We may see the trend of NZ small business looking to employ freelancer gig workers in the NZ gig economy to accomplish specific work tasks to remain productive and competitive. This may further put pressure on reducing the number of jobs in New Zealand opportunities for the next 18-24 months whilst the NZ and global economies recover.
How will this affect New Zealand workers, especially those who are largely employed by New Zealand Small Business? If jobs in New Zealand continue to remain low, many workers who previously only had permanent jobs, may need to be flexible in their approach to how they work in NZ for the next couple of years. Casual or part-time jobs may increase. Or on-demand gig work may become increasingly popular with NZ employers. This would see a rise in freelancers, contractors and gig workers.
But what is the difference between a job in New Zealand and a gig in NZ? Jobs are a broad set of functions carried out by an employee of the business. Job advertisements usually list the range of skills required to carry out the job and expected skill level. Jobs are time based work. A permanent job in NZ is the most conventional form of employment in New Zealand. Generations ago it was commonplace to have a job for life. A kiwi worker would be employed by a business, work their whole career in the same business carrying out the same work tasks and functions.
The job for life in NZ is almost a thing of the past. The future of work and new ways of working are rapidly changing the NZ workplace landscape. Technology is playing a massive role in automating repetitive task many NZ workers used to have as their primary job in New Zealand.
This means the NZ workplace is becoming more agile and change is increasing in how and where we work all the time. The career for life is now becoming threatened. No longer are NZ workers staying with the same employer in their job for life. Many skills they are trained and experienced are becoming obsolete due to the advances in Automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. As workers, the pressure to upskill and pivot your career (perhaps multiple times) due to business improvements or changing landscape of work in NZ is accelerating.
The digital era is upon us, software engineers, web developers, designers, internet cloud & cyber security jobs are the new high demand skills NZ business are competing for. With the increased Internet undersea capacity and diversity in providers, New Zealand is well placed to become a leader in global tech companies. We have recently seen the news that Microsoft will begin building datacentres in NZ soon. It won’t be long until we see other big cloud providers such as google GCP & Amazon AWS strategically build datacentres in New Zealand. Our geographical remoteness, once New Zealand’s Achilles heel for Trade, is now a huge draw card for International businesses re-assessing their global strategies. We regularly hear of overseas Billionaires buying land and gaining NZ residency as part of their work and lifestyle planning.
The more international investment that enters New Zealand, the more available capital for NZ tech startups, which now have a very real opportunity to compete globally and help raise the GDP of New Zealand. With Tourism in New Zealand the once largest export in NZ now in very unchartered waters for the next couple of years, NZ Tech companies will become hugely important to NZ economy as a whole. These will help grow jobs in New Zealand and perhaps this is the new opportunity we can take from the devastating impact of Covid19 on the NZ economy.
New Zealand has always created innovators, the digital revolution is only accelerating this. The opportunity with NZ tech SaaS companies especially is how we work is changing too. The need to be based in the larger cities of New Zealand due to the old restrictions of all the jobs being in the main cities of Auckland, Whangarei, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch & Queenstown Dunedin & Invercargill increase is no longer so important.
Advances in digital collaboration tools and imposed remote working restrictions imposed due to Covid19 have only highlighted we can promote a distributed workforce in New Zealand. Increasing jobs in the regions of New Zealand is a possibility. NZ Start-ups especially have shown they are more flexible in how to work in New Zealand. The business could be located in Tauranga, but the worker could easily complete their job in Nelson if the business and worker complement each other.
New Zealand population has just reached 5 million, with just over that working in NZ. With the future of work changing, we need to be progressive and forwarding thinking to ensure our workers stay ahead of the new ways of working in NZ. If we upskill our workers and promote new digital skills within our graduates, we have a huge opportunity to lead the world in becoming a South Pacific tech hub for creative and digital companies the envy of the world.
Gigexchange is the fastest growing jobsite platform in NZ. The trends in jobs in NZ we are currently seeing show high demand for construction jobs in Auckland, Wellington & Christchurch specifically. Web developer jobs in NZ are expected to increase again at the back end of 2020. We may see more of these jobs convert to gigs in NZ though. The creative jobs in New Zealand were hard hit during the Covid19 lockdown. Prior to this freelancer creative jobs in NZ that were booming included graphic designer jobs in Auckland. Content creator jobs in NZ are expected to recover as many small businesses look to begin advertising campaigns and utilise the large pool of creative talent in New Zealand. The area we expect to see the largest growth is jobs in Cybersecurity in Wellington and Auckland, due to the proximity to large corporates and NZ government.
At gigexchange, we are a pioneering NZ SaaS startup leading the world in all ways of working, not just new ways of working in NZ. We see the future of work in New Zealand. We want to provide increased opportunities through our freelancer gig economy service. But by creating a unique platform that also acts as a conventional jobsite, as well as volunteering. We provide flexibility for kiwi workers and NZ business between freelancer gigs and permanent jobs in NZ. All powered by your reputation.
We call this empowering the win-win.
If you are looking for a job in New Zealand, or wanting to move to NZ from overseas, sign up search jobs and apply for any job that suits your skills, or advertise your skills and services in our promote section. You may just land your dream job and move to NZ and live your life of dreams. Happy job hunting.