Market Overview

Survive to 2025 was last year’s motto.

Leaders went away for the Christmas holidays hoping the beginning of 2025 would start with more optimism. However, January and February statistics from sources we follow tell us that if there was optimism, it didn’t yet translate into the employment market.

In February 2025, job advertisements on SEEK New Zealand decreased by 17% compared to February 2024. On a month-to-month basis, there was a 2% decline from January to February 2025.

Seek NZ Country Manager Rob Clark tells us, “After two years of steady and significant decline in job ad volumes, the past eight months have been broadly flat. While we may not be out of the woods yet, the days of significant, broad-based drops in worker demand should be behind us.”

It was confirmed that NZ eased out of technical recession last quarter, with 0.7% growth in the GDP.

As we end the fiscal year for a lot of New Zealand organisations, one must be wondering if we’re going to see renewed budget and investment released soon. Organisation’s will also be closely watching the Government budget announcements in May; who and what will receive investment and what is the latest plan to “get New Zealand back on track”.

From 1 April, there are a number of new initiatives being rolled out by the government.

An interesting one is an additional 1% interest added to student loan interest rates for overseas borrowers, on top of the yearly re-calculation in rates that occurs.

Given student loans don’t bear interest if you’re living and working in NZ, will this help to halt what has seemingly felt like an exodus of our young, bright talent?

Should we interpret this combined information to mean that we are at or past the trough in our market now?

The year ahead

Considering I’ve now committed to updating this market update monthly is an indicator of just how inconsistent the market has been.

For some positivity, from an anecdotal perspective over the last couple of weeks, the employment market seems to be slowly picking up. It will be interesting to see if this is reflected in key indicators and reports that we follow and if there is genuinely a market change.

Talent NZ contractor extensions are being confirmed at a much higher percentage than in the past 12 months – we take this as a sign of increased confidence too.

We believe we are likely at a tipping point. From our experience of riding several market downturns, our market has shallow highly skilled talent pools so when the market turns it will turn fast.

We recommend that:

• Organisations strategically invest in their engagement and retention of high potential and high performing team members. Engagement survey data & exit survey data is key here.
• In parallel, leaders must identify key members in their teams and ensure you’re having open, transparent two-way communication.
• Even though job security has been a very high motivation, if an employee or contractor is not clear on what the future holds, then there is increased risk of them either actively considering opportunities or being responsive to approaches.
• With your contracting workforce, get proactive and lock and load the key talent you need in from an extension perspective. Ensure they know they are critical to the work or project.
• For your upcoming pieces of work, where are your skills gaps? Where you will require external talent, engage specialist recruitment organisations like Talent early and let’s work with you to create a plan.

To finish with something cheesy, because why not, if you’re still “surviving in 2025” now is the time to pause and ensure you have a plan to thrive in 2025.