Posted 10 28 09

New Zealand employers are being urged to prepare for a possible return to a labour shortage as the number of job advertisements starts to rise, according to an article published on www.stuff.co.nz

Trade Me has reported a "significant" jump in advertisements. Recruitment firm Hays says Seek and some newspapers are experiencing the same.

"The economy is starting to improve and the rise in job ads suggests confidence is starting to return and employers are starting to hire again especially in Auckland," Hays NZ managing director Jason Walker said.

He warned that employers who delayed their hiring decisions could be caught "in a competitive spiral like the market experienced 15 months ago, which saw businesses vie for the few top candidates in high demand".

Trade Me head of commercial Jimmy McGee said Trade Me Jobs had seen a sustained upturn in job ads for about two months on a national basis.

Numbers began to turn down in February and bottomed out in May at 5500 half the listings the site had at its peak last June. Now it had 6500 jobs advertised. "There seems to be a general sense of confidence improving," he said.

However, in Wellington, the job upturn has been slight. Mr McGee said there had been "pockets of growth" in areas like tourism, hospitality and construction, although they were coming off deep lows.

At the Dominion Post, Fairfax central region general manager Paul Elenio said there had been only a marginal increase in job advertisements in the capital so far, which was likely the result of caps on Government department hiring.

"I think Wellington's going to take longer to recover than a lot of the provincial centres and maybe even Auckland."

Predictions unemployment would not peak until mid-next year "don't provide a lot of hope for us but if employers are confident and they can see things like retail, rural sectors picking up, then that's when we'll see them replacing staff or appointing additional staff".

Source: This article was prepared based on a story featured on www.stuff.co.nz on 21 September 2009.