Max Whitehead: Where have all the workers gone?

International arrivals have not kept up with departures, and that's just one of the challenges facing Kiwi recruiters and employers. Photo / Michael Craig

OPINION:

Where have all the workers gone? Have you noticed? Our café service has slowed, more flights and buses are cancelled, and shelves are often empty.

Is Covid still responsible or does that no longer wash?

The real reason is, businesses can no longer source enough staff.

Strangely, other OECD countries have the same problem. International headhunters are now arriving on our shores in droves, poaching talented workers with tantalising salaries and conditions.

Kiwi employers are desperately responding with work-from-home policies, flexible hours, and dramatic pay increases. Some employers even offer cash bonuses if key employees stay longer than another six or twelve months.

Where have the workers gone? One theory goes hand-in-hand with what we observe in the education sphere. Educators tell us children and parents are treating school attendance as optional, and some early childhood centres and schools are reporting that roles have halved since the Covid lockdowns.

Is it possible that a large proportion of our productive workforce are preferring to stay at home to educate and care for their children?

Tertiary educators are also reporting low enrolment in universities and polytechnics.

Many of our high school leavers and younger adults are taking advantage of the Bank of Mum & Dad, preferring to take an OE than to start work or pursue higher education.

Others are choosing an early start to their careers and accepting employment offered by desperate employers to garner financial freedom.

As for the 25 to 29-year-olds, it is reported that fewer are employed in New Zealand now than pre-pandemic.

This is supported by our net migration figures showing that 10,700 more people left the country in the year ended May 2022 than arrived, resulting in a net loss for our overall population and productive workforce.

In a desperate attempt to keep their businesses afloat, employers are now desperately recruiting retirees and school leavers to fill the vacated roles.

Unfortunately, these workers are less prevalent and not as productive as the previous incumbents which explains why the standard or availability of our goods and services have declined since before Covid lockdowns.

While employers are struggling, our Government's current legislation program has dished out increased minimum pay, doubled sick days, and extra paid public holidays.

Along with this year's pending income insurance and fair pay laws, all these changes impose massive cost increases for employers.

And this follows four months or more of mandatory lockdowns where many employers were unable to earn an income.

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions a few weeks ago proposed a trial four-day week with five days' pay.

That would mean a 20 per cent drop in New Zealand's productivity when it was already recognised as one of the least productive countries in the OECD.

Our Government, unfortunately, perceives businesses to be big powerful employers with endless amounts of money – but the opposite is true.

Statistics NZ tell us that only 3 per cent of all New Zealand enterprises employ more than twenty staff while the other 97 per cent are either small employers or just self-employed Kiwi battlers desperately trying to get ahead as independent contractors.

While our government busies itself with creating more complicated employment laws, our talented employees are disappearing as well as many of our struggling businesses.

The question remains: Where have all the workers gone? Our theory proposes that, since lockdown, people perceive work and education as optional and have decided to put up their feet.

Do you share this view or do you have another theory as to where all the workers have gone?

-Max Whitehead is chief executive of Small Business Voice