Minorities fill workforce breach

By CLAIRE TREVETT

Migrants, Maori and Pacific Islanders will be increasingly relied on to fill New Zealand's workforce as an ageing Pakeha population retires, says a Department of Labour report.

Work Trends looked at the New Zealand workplace over the past 15 years and at what was expected to happen in the future.

It said lifting the educational and employment achievements of Maori and Pacific Islanders was "crucial for ensuring New Zealand's future prosperity".

Maori and Pacific Island populations were more youthful and would fill the gap left when Pakeha baby boomers retired.

The report said people could be required to work later in life so some jobs would not become free as the population aged, and employers would use incentives to keep people in work.

Though the national unemployment rate was about 5 per cent, the Maori rate was about 12 per cent and for Pacific people 9 per cent.

In 1991, when the unemployment rate peaked at 11 per cent, Maori and Pacific Island populations were reliant on manufacturing jobs, which were hard hit by recession, and their unemployment rate soared to more than 25 per cent.

However, the report noted proportionately more Maori were now moving into tertiary education than Pakeha.

Unemployment rates for Pacific Island people were also on their way down.

The report attributed this drop to the larger proportion of Pacific people who were born in New Zealand, better educated and more able to fit into the workforce.

It said the gap between Maori and Pakeha employment and income levels would also decrease as more Maori entered their high-earning working years.

Asians were also expected to fill a bigger slice of the workforce, because of migration.

It said the number of skilled New Zealanders leaving the country was balanced by the skills of new immigrants.

However, the report said unemployment in migrant populations had increased recently, because immigration policies had let in a wider range of people.

It warned the benefit of new immigrants could be affected by the difficulties of settling in a new land.

"A worker from overseas may not immediately slot into the workforce, a workplace or an occupation ... Doing more to smooth the path of workers born overseas will enhance New Zealand's ability to survive and thrive in the global marketplace."

New migrants who were culturally different, had difficulty with English and had skills and qualifications New Zealand employers were unfamiliar with could find work harder to find.

The report also looked at future boom and bust industries.

It said there was "no crystal ball to see how tomorrow's jobs will differ from today's, what technologies we will used at work or what the 'hot' new careers will be a decade from now".

However new job growth would be concentrated in professional and service occupations.

Managerial, professional, technical, and service and sales occupations had accounted for 78 per cent of the 327,000 jobs added from 1992 to 2002.

In comparison, there had been very small increases in industries such as agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing. Last year there were 11,000 fewer jobs in manufacturing than there were in 1987.

The report warned people should learn a wider range of skills to make it easier to find employment and to enable them to take on more tasks, such as computer work.

They should be adaptable, and prepared to move region depending on which areas offered work that suited their skills.

NZ AT WORK

Working age population

MAORI

2001 - 11.7 per cent

2021 - 13.5 per cent

PACIFIC iSLANDERS

2001 - 5.1 per cent

2021 - 7.1 per cent

ASIAN

2001 - 6.7 per cent

2021 - 12.5 per cent

EUROPEAN

2001 - 76.5 per cent

2021 - 67 per cent

WAGES

Highest paid: Managerial, professional and technical workers.

Lowest paid: Sales, service, agriculture, fishery, labourers and cleaners.

Women: Earn a lower average hourly rate than men - but increased wages by 17 per cent from 1997 to 2002, compared with a 12 per cent rise for men.