The New Zealand Job Market
Navigating your way through the job search process, comes with additional challenges when you are a migrant.
If you are currently looking for a job in New Zealand, you probably do not need an economist or a subscription to the New Zealand Herald, to tell you that the labour market has been difficult. You already know how challenging it is.
You know because you have probably applied for jobs and heard nothing back. You know because roles that might once have attracted 30 applicants now seem to attract several hundred. You know because employers can afford to be more selective, recruitment processes take longer and, in some cases, perfectly good candidates struggle even to get through the first round of screening.
For migrants, the experience can be particularly frustrating. You might have qualifications, years of experience and an impressive employment history overseas, only to discover that the New Zealand job market does not immediately respond with the enthusiasm or excitement you were expecting.
That is the uncomfortable part, however the more interesting part is that the numbers are beginning to tell a slightly different story.
New Zealand's labour market is still soft, but there are signs that employment activity is starting to improve - slowly but very steadily. It is far too early to declare victory, throw the CV in the air and wait for the phone to ring, but there are reasons for job seekers, including migrants, to be more optimistic than they were a year ago.
The Numbers Are Moving
The headline unemployment figure remains pretty untidy. Stats NZ recorded an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent in the June 2026 quarter, up from 5.4 percent in March. There were approximately 171,000 people unemployed, while the underutilisation rate, which captures a wider group of people wanting more work, increased to 13.8 percent.
Those numbers are important because they explain what many job seekers are experiencing. More people are competing for work and employers generally have more choice. However unemployment figures are backward-looking to some extent, and when we look elsewhere in the labour market there are some more encouraging signs.
MBIE's Jobs Online data shows that online job advertisements increased by 7 percent in the year to the June 2026 quarter. More importantly, that was the fourth consecutive quarter of annual growth after job advertisements had previously fallen for 11 quarters in a row. That is a reasonably significant change in direction.
Signs of Recovery
The job market is recovering, and signs are that there are more employers actively looking to recruit - although taking a steady and cautious approach.
Advertising increased across seven of the nine industries measured by MBIE and across nine of the ten regions. \
Manufacturing, construction and the primary industries were among the strongest areas of growth. Advertising also increased across seven of the eight broad occupational groups.
Even Auckland, which had been particularly weak, recorded its second consecutive quarter of annual growth in job advertising after a prolonged period of decline.
The most recent Stats NZ employment indicators add another small piece to the overall picture. In August 2026, seasonally adjusted filled jobs increased by 0.2 percent from July, reaching approximately 2.36 million. Compared with August last year, actual filled jobs were up by around 20,800, or 0.9 percent.
Public administration and safety, healthcare and social assistance, administrative and support services, construction, and education all recorded increases in filled jobs over the year. None of this means the employment market has suddenly become easy. SEEK data during the winter also showed monthly job advertising remaining patchy and competition between applicants still high.
What it does suggest is that the market may finally be moving away from the relentless downward trends we saw through much of 2024 and 2025.
For someone searching for work, that difference matters, although it may not feel like it at the moment. Labour markets are often slow moving beasts and it can take more time for positive signs to creep in to the market than negative ones. For migrants, these statistics can be useful, but ultimately the real test is what is happening in your inbox, when you send out applications.
Challenges For Migrants
Finding a job is difficult enough when the only question is whether an employer wants to hire you. For a migrant, there is often another question sitting quietly behind it: will this job actually work for my immigration situation and how can I get around the chicken and egg situation, of needing a job to get the visa, but needing a visa to get the job.
Someone who needs an Accredited Employer Work Visa, for example, normally needs an offer of at least 30 hours per week from an accredited employer. The employer will usually also need an approved job check for the position, and the migrant must meet the relevant skill, qualification, experience and, where applicable, English language requirements. Then there is the longer-term question.
If residence is the objective, not every job carries the same immigration weight. The occupation, pay, employer, hours, qualifications, registration requirements and the particular residence pathway being pursued can all matter. A job might therefore be perfectly respectable employment and still be entirely unhelpful for the longer-term immigration plan.
Seek And You Will Find
Migrants face additional challenges in the job market, without having the immediate authority to work - but there are ways to manage and overcome that.
That is something we see surprisingly often, particularly in online chat forums. A migrant spends months desperately trying to secure employment, finally receives an offer and only then asks whether the job will support the visa or residence pathway they had in mind. Sometimes it will. Sometimes it will not.
That does not mean migrants should become so obsessed with immigration criteria that they stop looking at ordinary employment opportunities. Quite the opposite. It means the search needs to be better informed. There is also a tendency, particularly during a weak labour market, for migrants to assume that every unsuccessful application is because they are a migrant.
Sometimes immigration status is a factor. Employers can be hesitant about visa requirements, particularly where they do not understand the process or believe it will involve months of paperwork and several small forests worth of forms. But sometimes the issue is simply that 150 other people applied for the same job.
The positive side of the current market is that employers are hiring. Not everywhere, not at the frantic pace we saw during the post-Covid labour shortage, and certainly not without competition. But hiring is happening and the direction of travel appears much better than it was.
That means migrants need to think less about applying for absolutely everything and more about positioning themselves properly for the opportunities that do exist. A strong overseas career does not automatically translate into a strong New Zealand job application. Employers here may not recognise the companies you have worked for, the qualifications you hold or even the significance of your previous job title. A CV that worked extremely well in India, South Africa, the Philippines, the United Kingdom or elsewhere may not work particularly well here.
There is also the question of how you explain your immigration position. Putting "requires visa sponsorship" at the top of a CV without any further explanation is unlikely to inspire confidence. On the other hand, telling an employer clearly that they are already accredited, that the role appears capable of supporting the relevant visa, and that professional immigration assistance is available can turn something that looks complicated into something relatively manageable.
Employers are generally interested in hiring good people. They are less interested in becoming immigration advisers. The easier you can make that conversation, the better. Migrants should also resist the temptation to interpret a difficult few months as proof that there is no future here. Labour markets move. Industries recover at different speeds. Regions behave differently. Skills that attracted little attention six months ago can suddenly become difficult to find again.
The current data does not suggest a booming employment market. It does, however, suggest a market in which opportunities are starting to reappear. For people who have spent the last year hearing nothing except bad news, that is definitely worth paying attention to.
How We Can Help
At Turner Hopkins Immigration Specialists, we are not recruiters and we remind potential clients of this regularly. We do not have a cupboard full of jobs and we cannot simply place someone into employment. If we could, our lives would probably be considerably easier. What we do provide is substantial support around the employment process for clients whose immigration plans depend on securing the right job.
That can include helping clients understand what sort of employment they should actually be targeting, reviewing and improving CVs for the New Zealand market, discussing how to approach employers and helping clients explain their visa position accurately and sensibly.
Once an employer is interested, we can also look at whether the proposed role fits the relevant immigration requirements and assist the employer with the immigration process where required, including employer accreditation, job checks and the steps involved in supporting a migrant worker.
For someone pursuing residence, we can also look beyond the immediate job offer and consider whether the position fits the longer-term immigration strategy. That can be crucial, because finding a job and finding the right job are not always the same thing.
The New Zealand labour market remains competitive. Migrants are not imagining that. However the numbers are beginning to improve, employers are advertising more roles than they were a year ago and filled employment is edging upwards. For migrants who want to build a future in New Zealand, the answer is not to pretend the market is easy. It is to understand the market, understand the immigration rules and make sure the two are working together.
If your ability to remain in New Zealand depends on securing employment, or you have found an employer who wants to hire you but is unsure how the immigration process works, talk to us. We can help you work out what needs to happen next.
Until next week.
