Trade Me Jobs data for the July-September quarter showed the employment market enjoyed solid growth in almost every region, with jobs listings in Wanganui up 26 per cent - at 221 listings - compared with the same period last year.
Healthcare and trade saw the biggest increases in Wanganui.
Mr Musson said it was becoming common for employers to offer training packages in order to attract and retain employees. Employers were also increasingly recruiting staff from outside New Zealand.
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 added.
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 for tradespeople. 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. 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.
