The national number flatters
New Zealand’s labour market has now strung together nine consecutive months of job ad growth, with annual volumes up 12.2% in February 2026, the strongest annual rise since 2022. Applications per job ad have been falling since their August 2025 peak, dropping 2.4% in February alone.
For employers, that shift matters. After roughly three years of being flooded with candidates, the balance of power in recruitment is tilting back. But the national figures are doing what national figures always do: averaging away the story that actually affects your hiring decisions.
SEEK NZ Country Manager Rob Clark frames the trend as structural rather than noise: “Because we’re seeing it across most industries and most geographies, that implies that it’s a genuine market movement.” He’s half right. The direction is genuine. The distribution is wildly uneven.
South Island businesses are already losing their hiring edge
The South Island is running a different labour market entirely. In February 2026, Otago posted 23.0% annual growth in job ads, Southland 21.3%, West Coast 20.9%, and Canterbury 20.0%. These numbers follow similarly aggressive gains through late 2025, when Southland was up 27% and Canterbury 16%.
The drivers are tangible: construction, trades, manufacturing and transport, all tied to infrastructure investment. Construction job ads surged 38.9% year-on-year in February and engineering rose 26.3%. Clark attributes this directly to “ongoing and new investment in major infrastructure projects”.
For South Island trades and construction firms that spent the downturn cherry-picking from deep applicant pools, that window is closing. Demand for skilled workers is outpacing supply, and wage pressure in these sectors will follow.
Auckland and Wellington remain stuck
Auckland recorded just 1.1% monthly growth in January 2026. Wellington’s 1.5% monthly rise was driven largely by government and defence roles, not broad private sector confidence. MBIE noted that Auckland’s declining vacancies have had an outsized drag on national figures given the city accounts for roughly a third of all employment.
Retail, consumer products, and banking remain in decline, all concentrated in the major centres. Professional services employers in Auckland still have leverage. They just don’t have the growth that would justify using it aggressively.
The part-time shift is not going away
Underneath the ad volume recovery sits a structural change that most coverage glosses over. The BNZ/SEEK employment report documented full-time employment falling 12,000 people in the March 2025 quarter while part-time rose 13,000. Full-time job ads were down 9.9% year-on-year compared to just 0.5% for part-time.
This is not a cyclical blip. Businesses restructuring their workforce toward flexible arrangements are swimming with the current. Those waiting for full-time permanent hiring to return to 2022 levels may be waiting a long time.
What employers should actually do with this
The practical takeaway depends entirely on where you sit. If you’re hiring in construction, engineering, healthcare or agriculture, particularly in the South Island, the post-downturn buyer’s market is already over. Annual salary growth in real estate and property hit 9.7% by November 2025, with healthcare, legal, and media all above 4%. Waiting to hire is not cost-free.
If you’re in Auckland or Wellington professional services, you still have time, but the national trend line is moving against you. Applications per role remain elevated compared to pre-COVID norms, as SEEK’s October 2025 data confirmed, but they’re falling month on month.
Remember what the trough looked like. As recently as July 2024, job ads were still down 29% year-on-year and competition among candidates showed “no sign of abating.” By November 2025, applicants per job fell for the first time since January 2022. That is a four-year inflection point.
Clark’s own assessment captures it well: “The consistency of this growth suggests we’re now in a genuine recovery phase rather than simply stabilising.” Nine months is a trend. But a trend that runs at 23% in Otago and barely registers in Auckland is not one trend. It is two, and the businesses that treat them as one will get their hiring strategy wrong.
Sources
- RNZ: New figures show slow growth in job market (2026-03-13)
- SEEK NZ Employment Report – February 2026 (2026-03-13)
- NZ Herald: SEEK data shows job ads rise and competition eases as wages pick up (2025-12-12)
- RNZ: Eight months of job ad growth signals stronger 2026 start (2026-02-13)
- SEEK NZ Employment Report – December 2025 (2026-01-16)
- BNZ/SEEK Employment Report – May 2025 (2025-05)
- RNZ: Job ads up, but competition still fierce (2024-08-08)
- SEEK Employment Dashboard – October 2025 (2025-10)
- SEEK NZ Employment Report – April 2025 (2025-05-08)