pn616. The jobs that New Zealanders supposedly can't or won't do: Some real answers needed

I'm finding recent news items on a possible minimum wage increase, unemployment, skills shortages and foreign visa applications more than a little confusing. They are all related issues but causes and connections are far from clear.

We now, apparently, have 151,000 people registered as unemployed, with an increase of 37,000 in the last quarter, the highest increase since 1986.   At the same time, some employers, protesting a possible future minimum wage increase, are either dismissing workers because business has declined, or they are on the brink of closing down due to a lack of "skilled" workers.  One heading read: "From real estate agents to pet groomers: These are the jobs that New Zealanders can't or won't do." 

Why can't they? Do they lack the skills, or are the jobs in a different locality? 

And why won't they? Because they're better off on the unemployed benefit,  they're just bone lazy, or the wages offered are too low? No one seems prepared to hazard a guess. I've not seen any research published on this critical issue.

And why is there such a demand to grant more temporary  work visas to foreign workers when we have so many people unemployed? Because Kiwis, for one of the above  reason, don't apply for the jobs, or  because  they don't have the skills required? 

Why don't they have these skills? Because we scrapped apprenticeships and our education system is out of kilter: there's a misfit between what our young people are learning and what the market requires?   If so, why is this?

The visa applicants

One further question:  What are the skills our young and not-so-young workforce lack? Can this be inferred from work visa applications? From last March to September Immigration New Zealand received more than 18,000 new work visa applications under the essential skills category, approving 15,000 of them. That's a pitiable number compared with the number of our unemployed but more to the point an unstated  proportion were in jobs one would hardly call "skilled". These included domestic cleaner, bar attendant, checkout operator, door-to-door salesperson, factory process worker, garden labourer, handyperson, mechanic's assistant. 

Some New Zealanders somewhere surely must be able and willing to fill such jobs.  Others though skilled, such as private music teacher, seemed unessential or unnecessary to support our economy.   

There are a number of hire firms that bridge the worker needed-worker available gap but they mainly offer casual work at the minimum wage, at a scale unlikely to resolve the unemployment situation. I remember when I was a teenager we had government Labour Exchanges where you could go to find work. Perhaps some joint government-business exchanges in every town and city would go some way towards employing more New Zealanders.   

But before Government rushes in to take up this suggestion (I jest!), some serious, detailed, location and person level  research is needed into the supply-demand misfits and unanswered questions raised above. 

I can't accept that "these are the jobs that New Zealanders can't or won't do" unless there are very good reasons.

-- ACW