Graduate job ads made up just over 2 percent of all listings on Seek last month. That is the main way into professional work for thousands of people who have just graduated, and it has nearly disappeared.
This is not simply a hard year for young people. Employers are too cautious to invest in entry-level talent. That makes sense for any single firm. When most firms do it at once, it stores up a skills problem that will hit the same businesses in five to ten years.
Applications sent, nothing back
The mood at this spring’s graduation ceremonies was grim. “No one’s even sending rejections, they’re just leaving you empty,” said Chloe Cameron, a University of Auckland environmental science and biology graduate who is working on her parents’ blueberry farm while she keeps looking for work in her field. Psychology graduate Vittoria Strother described packing her CV with buzzwords like “resourceful” and “adaptive” to get past AI screening tools. Her mother watched her send 40 to 50 applications and get perhaps three replies.
The most telling detail came from Abby Brooking, who has been job-hunting since April with a postgraduate diploma in primary teaching. Schools and hospitals say they are “crying out” for teachers and nurses, she said, yet they still favour experienced hires over new graduates. International IT graduate Emma He is going home to China to build experience there instead.
The recovery is happening somewhere else
The headline hiring numbers look better than graduates’ inboxes. Seek job ads are up 9.7% year-on-year after 21 straight months of growth. Most of that growth is in mining and energy (up 46.7%), manufacturing, transport and logistics (up 28.1%), hospitality and retail. These sectors rarely take on graduates in office roles. Applications per ad also recorded their sharpest rise in 18 months, so competition for each role is getting harder, not easier.
MBIE’s Jobs Online measure shows ads up 7% over the year to June. That growth is coming off a very low base. The March quarterly report still showed a 36.4% fall over three years. BNZ economists warned that “the level of job ads suggests hiring caution remains“. Unemployment rose to 5.6% in the June quarter, and underutilisation had already reached 12.9% in March. Graduates are competing against experienced workers who are also looking for jobs.
Sensible for one firm, costly when everyone does it
EMA head of advocacy Alan McDonald is candid about what is happening. Firms are protecting the staff they already have, and “when recruitment slows, young people are often the first to miss out because entry-level jobs become less available.” Given high costs and weak demand, that is a reasonable choice for an individual business.
AI adds to the problem. A University of Auckland summary of IDC research found more than half of NZ employers surveyed are slowing or stopping entry-level hiring as AI takes over routine work. Nearly nine in ten expect a further slowdown within three years. Reserve Bank Governor Anna Breman has acknowledged that reluctance to hire young workers “could be an issue in the short term, particularly for young people.”
The cost shows up later. The predictable, repetitive tasks that AI now handles are the same tasks juniors used to learn on. Fortitude Group recruiter Hayley Pickard said removing that first rung “would create a succession issue”. A firm that hires no juniors in 2026 will have no experienced mid-level staff in 2031, and every competitor will be trying to hire from the same small pool.
Many graduates will go to Australia
Graduates who cannot find a start at home have an easy alternative. In March 2026, Newsroom calculated that every one percentage point widening in the trans-Tasman unemployment gap sends an extra 14,000 New Zealanders to Australia. Youth unemployment was then 16.5%, and Seek economist Blair Chapman said graduate ads had fallen more sharply in NZ than across the Tasman. Many graduates who leave build their early careers there and do not come back.
Graduate hiring is succession planning
None of this calls for a government job scheme. It calls for business owners to look further ahead. A graduate programme is not charity. It is the cheapest way to build the senior staff a firm will need, and taking on one junior now costs less than bidding for scarce experienced people when the market tightens.
Student Job Search chief executive Louise Saviker sees tentative signs of improvement. When the recovery reaches office jobs, firms that kept hiring juniors will have a skilled pipeline ready. Firms that did not will be competing with Sydney for talent they chose not to develop.
Sources
- NZ Herald: ‘No one’s even sending rejections’: Job climate remains bleak for new graduates (2026-09-30)
- RNZ: Job climate remains bleak for new graduates (2026-10-01)
- Seek: NZ Employment Report – August 2026 (2026-08-01)
- BNZ: SEEK Report – June 2026 (2026-06-19)
- EMA: Businesses holding back on hiring as labour market weakens (2026-08-05)
- Stats NZ: Labour market statistics: March 2026 quarter (2026-05-06)
- University of Auckland: If entry-level jobs are disappearing, how do young people get started? (2026-04-21)
- RNZ: Is AI eliminating the first rung of employment ladder? (2026-09-07)
- Newsroom: NZ graduates being pushed, not pulled, to Australia (2026-03-02)
Join the discussion
Add useful context, ask a good question, or challenge an idea — keep it specific and respectful.