"Changes to the apprenticeship scheme created a generational gap, meaning people are coming up to retirement age with no one to fill their positions."
Young people wanting to be in higher level positions than their skills warranted and experienced tradesmen moving to Australia for better pay, contributed to the issue, he said.
Chartered accountants and some IT positions were also hard to fill.
The job market was, however, improving due to increased GDP and high business confidence.
Mr Rosemergy said: "There are lots of highly-skilled people looking for senior and mid-level management jobs that there aren't roles for."
Employers commonly looked overseas and promoted the relaxed Northland lifestyle when recruiting for hard-to-fill positions.
Employers and Manufacturers Association spokesman Gilbert Peterson said recruitment difficulties stemmed from a gap between skills required for jobs and skills actually being developed.
"Larger companies are investing in skills training, but smaller companies tend not to be able afford to do that," he said.
"There's a tight labour market and lots of people understand the need to upskill, but the demand for skills keeps getting ahead of them."
Trades academies had good results, but it would be a while before there was a steady stream of graduates because the process was fairly new, Mr Peterson said. "The timelag of people not trained in enough skills could go on for years."
Statistics New Zealand's 2014 business operations survey of 36,000 businesses found 31 per cent were reporting vacancies that were hard to fill, particularly in trades. The trend has been rising since 2009.
Only 51 per cent of the firms considered all their staff to have all the skills required to do their jobs, and for tradespeople the proportion fell to 44 per cent.
Forestry, machinery manufacturing, construction, telecommunications and computer systems design were the industries with the highest levels of hard-to-fill vacancies - all above 40 per cent.
When asked what actions they had taken as a result, 39 per cent of the businesses reporting hard-to-fill vacancies said they increased salaries, 35 per cent trained less qualified recruits, 26 per cent brought in contractors, 23 per cent recruited overseas and 29 per cent offered training.
Trade Me Jobs data for the July-September quarter showed the employment market had solid growth in almost every region, with listings up 16.4 per cent on last year.
In Whangarei, job listings were up 15 per cent, with 627 listings. Far North listings were up 27 per cent at 223.
Trade and education were Whangarei's biggest movers, while engineering was one of the biggest drivers of growth in the Far North.
