Applications per job ad showed a 1 percent increase in May and were at record highs, Seek said.
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Finding a job is getting harder, as new data shows job listings continuing to fall and more competition than ever before for the limited places on offer.
Employment website Seek NZ’s June dashboard showed job ad volumes fell 8 percent in June, and were down by more than a third from a year ago. Volumes have been consistently falling since February.
Applications per job ad, recorded with a one-month lag, showed a 1 percent increase in May and were at record highs, Seek said.
Most regions saw a fall in job ad volumes, including a 9 percent fall in Wellington, 8 percent in Auckland and 7 percent in Canterbury.
Manawatū recorded the biggest fall in monthly job ads at 16 percent, while Marlborough saw the highest annual fall of 50 percent.
Seek country manager Rob Clark said the job market had become increasingly challenging for candidates.
“It’s a lot tougher than it has been in the past. We are seeing a gradual decline in the number of advertised roles, but we’re also seeing a very large number of applicants applying for each of the roles.”
Clark said the website had more than 16,000 jobs listed, meaning “there still are roles out there”.
A number of factors had made the job market tighter and it was not all down to immigration, he said.
“Immigration plays some role in it, but it’s really about the economic cycle and the amount of economic activity, and at the moment, obviously, that’s quite low.”
It meant employers had decided not to add more people to their workforce, and this translated to fewer job listings.
In terms of the top 10 sectors for job ad volumes, retail and consumer products saw the biggest monthly fall, down 18 percent.
Administration and office support recorded the biggest annual fall, down 44 percent from June 2023.