A bounce from the bottom, not a return to normal
SEEK’s May 2026 employment report shows job ad volumes rose 0.3% over April and roughly 12% year-on-year, reaching the highest level since 2024. That follows April’s 0.8% monthly and 13.1% annual gain. MBIE’s Jobs Online quarterly report for March corroborates the trend, recording 11.8% annual growth across all nine industries, all eight occupation groups, and all ten regions. Auckland posted its first quarter of annual growth since September 2022.
SEEK country manager Rob Clark framed it as a broadening recovery: “What we’re seeing in New Zealand’s job market is a recovery that is broadening and deepening. The regions are firing, with particular growth tied to big building projects and infrastructure outside of the major cities.”
But context matters. MBIE’s December 2025 report documented a 44% fall in online job ads over the three years to December 2025. Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon put it more starkly: “MBIE’s Job Ad index shows that the number of job adverts nationally fell 54 percent between 2023 and 2025, and Seek data shows that the number of applicants rose by 2.5 times.” A 12% bounce from a 54% collapse is progress, not recovery.
406,000 people are unemployed and the mismatch is structural
MBIE’s March 2026 labour market snapshot shows unemployment at 6.0%, with 406,000 people out of work, up 17,000 year-on-year. The underutilisation rate, which captures the underemployed and those who have stopped looking, sits at 12.9%, up half a percentage point on the year.
Despite more ads going live, applications per job ad continued to rise in April by 0.6%, meaning candidate supply is still outstripping demand. Clark acknowledged the imbalance: “It’s slowly getting better but it’s still very much an employer’s market overall.”
The deeper problem is that workers are not moving. Brunsdon flagged that the quarterly job turnover rate is at its lowest level on record, with 12.8% of workers changing job each quarter. Workers stuck in mismatched roles stay put when the market is weak. That freezes the dynamic reallocation of skills that a healthy labour market depends on.
Construction is booming, but seasonal noise is everywhere
Construction job ads rose 44.8% year-on-year in April, the standout sector by a wide margin. The West Coast recorded more than 34% year-on-year growth in May, while Southland was up 30% annually in April. Regional infrastructure projects are the primary driver.
But Clark cautioned that seasonal factors inflate some of the regional figures, attributing strength in Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay, and Bay of Plenty partly to wine and kiwifruit harvests. He also flagged the public sector’s contribution to headline growth, noting “there is still momentum in the public sector, though in light of recent announcements, this may be short lived”.
AI skills are in demand but the talent pool barely exists
References to AI-related skills in job ads more than doubled over the past year, with a further 3.9% monthly increase in May. Growth is fastest in consulting and strategy roles. But AI keywords still appear in just 2.9% of total job ads, meaning the absolute numbers are small and the pool of qualified candidates is thinner still.
Advertised salaries are creeping up, with annual growth at 3.1% in May, the highest since late 2024. Sectors like advertising, arts and media saw nearly 11% annual salary growth. For employers competing for scarce specialist talent, the cost of hiring is rising even as the broader market favours employers.
Geopolitics could stall the recovery before it matures
Infometrics economist Rob Heyes offered a timing caveat: “The job gains we are seeing in March and April are probably based largely on hiring decisions made in January and February, perhaps even late last year.” Those decisions were made before the latest deterioration in global confidence.
Clark was blunter: “We finally turned a corner and there was more optimism but there’s been a spanner thrown in the works recently.”
For business owners trying to hire, the practical reality has not changed much. The applicant pile is large but the right candidates remain scarce. Posting more ads does not fix a structural mismatch between the skills employers need and the skills the workforce has. Until job turnover picks up and workers start moving again, the headline recovery will keep flattering a labour market that is still, for anyone filling a specialist role, fundamentally stuck.
Sources
- RNZ: Highest volume of jobs being listed since 2024 – Seek report (2026-06-17)
- Interest.co.nz: Hiring demand continues to climb, Seek says (2026-05-21)
- RNZ: Here’s where there are thousands of new jobs (2026-04-23)
- RNZ: Spanner in the works for job market (2026-05-21)
- Newstalk ZB: Seek data shows 4.1% monthly increase in AI-related skills in job ads (2026-05-21)
- SEEK Employment Dashboard – April 2026 (2026-05)