$200 billion pipeline, not enough workers to build any of it

The constraint no one can fund their way out of

New Zealand’s most senior infrastructure leaders have landed on an uncomfortable conclusion: the country’s $200 billion project pipeline faces a bottleneck that no amount of funding or fast-track consenting can fix. There simply are not enough skilled people to build it.

Tracey Ryan, chief executive of Aurecon New Zealand and chair of Infrastructure New Zealand, told the NZ Herald’s Infrastructure Report that the country needs to reframe how it thinks about infrastructure entirely: “If we really think about New Zealand’s future, growth is the overall objective and infrastructure is ultimately a tool that enables growth, rather than just being a series of construction projects.”

That reframing matters, because the workforce numbers behind it are grim.

The workforce is going backwards

Construction employment is falling at the fastest rate in more than a decade. In the year to March 2025, construction sector employment dropped 3.5%, and the sector has shed 16,000 jobs over two years, with activity at its lowest per-capita level since 2019.

Worse, the people leaving construction are often leaving the country. In the year to September 2025, Stats NZ recorded a net loss of 46,400 New Zealand citizens, most of the 72,700 departures heading to Australia, where wages are higher and the project pipeline is steadier. Infrastructure workers are among the most mobile in the labour market.

The engineering shortfall is structural rather than cyclical. Waihanga Ara Rau, the Workforce Development Council for Construction and Infrastructure, reported in April 2025 that the country needs roughly 2,300 new engineers a year and is falling short. Only 9% of degree graduates study engineering, below the OECD average, and a third of those who do graduate leave engineering roles within two years. About a third of the engineering workforce trained overseas, a dependency that leaves New Zealand exposed every time Australia offers better terms.

The stop-start trap

The deeper problem is the cycle itself. Cancel or delay projects and the workforce disperses. Announce new projects and there is no one left to deliver them.

Infrastructure New Zealand chief executive Nick Leggett put it bluntly in January 2026: “Cancelling projects, reducing the pipeline of work, means people leave our infrastructure workforce, or leave the country to go to places that have a decent pipeline.”

The City Rail Link is the textbook case. Infrastructure New Zealand’s December 2024 submission to Te Waihanga noted that more than 100 tunnel boring machine operators left New Zealand after CRL was completed. Bringing that skill set back for a future Waitematā Harbour crossing will cost far more than keeping the workers continuously employed would have. The submission also named a gap the sector rarely admits to: “The ‘art’ of project leadership is something that New Zealand has not proved to be particularly good at in recent decades.”

Engineering New Zealand chief executive Dr Richard Templer warned in February 2025 that the pipeline had “all but dried up,” with a “devastating impact” on the profession. His fix was less about money than certainty: “New Zealand also needs a clear, committed infrastructure pipeline that outlives each political term. Engineers need to know what is happening, and when.”

The demand is only getting bigger

The cruel irony is that demand is rising fast. The MBIE National Construction Pipeline Report released in December 2025 forecasts infrastructure activity climbing from $16.9 billion in 2024 to $19.6 billion by 2030, with total construction reaching $55.7 billion in 2025.

The transport sector alone shows the scale of the gap. Officials warned Transport Minister Simeon Brown in September 2024 that the sector needed about 65,000 workers by 2026/27, up from 40,000 in 2022/23, an increase equivalent to the entire population of Ashburton. The briefing described that target as “significantly higher than what the current trend would suggest is feasible.”

What it means for business

For firms tendering, commissioning or delivering infrastructure work, the maths is simple and unforgiving. Every project in the pipeline competes for the same thin pool of engineers, project managers and tradespeople, and scarcity drives wages and subcontractor rates up across construction, energy, transport and water. New Zealand already sits in the bottom 10% of OECD nations for value obtained from infrastructure spend, a ranking that reflects exactly this kind of cost inflation.

There is an upside for firms willing to act. The pipeline is real and it runs through 2030 and beyond, so businesses that invest now in apprenticeships, graduate programmes and retention will be the ones positioned to capture sustained multi-year revenue. The rest will keep overpromising, underpricing risk, and watching their best people board the plane to Brisbane. Until the pipeline becomes credible and continuous, the $200 billion number is just a wish list.

Sources

• Women in Infrastructure: Four leaders warn skills shortage threatens $200b project pipeline (2026-08-19)
• We can build big, so why has New Zealand’s pipeline run dry? (2026-01-04)
• Government needs to hire equivalent of Ashburton by 2026 to deliver transport promises (2024-09-18)
• ‘Devastating’: Hundreds of engineers leaving NZ due to infrastructure delays, CEO claims (2025-02-16)
• Engineering Skills Shortage: A Growing Concern (2025-04-03)
• Infrastructure New Zealand Submission on the National Infrastructure Plan discussion document (2024-12)