A recruitment firm says there is still fierce competition for jobs around the country as languishing employment openings look to bounce back.
It comes as broad downsizing and cuts across the public sector continue, with unemployment creeping up to its highest rate since mid-2020.
Last year, Beyond Recruitment saw its worst year of new job listings, although things were starting to improve over the early part of 2025.
The company’s co-director Ben Pearson estimated job vacancies had plummeted by about 60 to 70 percent in two years.
“There’s still a large amount of people out there looking for work,” he said.
“It’s very very competitive for jobs at the moment, that hasn’t really changed.”
There were “severe skill shortages” in a few specialist areas, including public sector policy, but across the broad spectrum of corporate roles there was significant competition and a lot of uncertainty, Pearson said.
Some unexpected trends among job seekers had also surfaced, with last minute job offer refusals becoming more common.
“We might take someone through a process, they become the preferred candidate and we’re able to get them a job offer,” Pearson said.
“We’re having a much higher instance of people declining those job offers and making decisions to either stay where they are, or just a lot of hesitancy about actually accepting a job.
“A recruitment process isn’t a short process, or an easy process and you get to the end and we’re seeing more people doing a ‘yeah nah’.”
Loyalty to existing employers during a period of mass redundancies had been a factor, although Pearson found the trend “unusual”.
He said staying in regular contact with jobseekers had proven to be difficult given the volume of people looking for work.
Signs of modest improvement were also noted in Seek’s latest monthly report, showing job ads in March had risen 2 percent, the first increase in two-and-a-half years.
Job ads dropped by 15 percent for the year ending March with applications per job rising 2 percent in a month.
The latest annual jobs market report by Trade Me compiled feedback from jobseekers and employers around the country with over 6000 people responding to the survey.
The first three months of this year saw the number of job applications rise 8 percent on the same time last year.
During this period the number of job listings on Trade Me increased by 16 percent compared to the final quarter of last year.
Trade Me job listings attracted a nation-wide average of 34 applicants during this time.
The report showed four in 10 New Zealanders had plans to leave their jobs this year.
The main reasons were dissatisfaction with workplace culture (18 percent), better pay (17 percent) and career prospects (16 percent).
Trade Me’s Head of Jobs Nicole Williams said jobseekers generally were feeling upbeat about their prospects this year.
“When we asked this same question last year, two in ten employees indicated an active intent to find a new job,” she said.
“To see that number now sitting at four in ten suggests a growing sense of optimism about what opportunities 2025 may present.
“However, this positive momentum is not without its challenges. Job seekers still report difficulties in finding new roles.”
Year-on-year listings fell by 32 percent, with the largest falls recorded in Hawke’s Bay (43 percent), Auckland (41 percent) and Nelson / Tasman (40 percent).
“If we look at the market from a year-on-year perspective, the landscape remains tough for job seekers, but if we compare it to the tail end of 2024 the picture is a little brighter,” Williams said.
