What Australia’s skills shortages tell Kiwis
Trades remain the single biggest contributor to Australian job shortages, with roughly half of all technician and trades occupations still classed as undersupplied. Vacancy fill rates for trade roles have fallen further than almost any other skill level, meaning employers are taking longer, and trying harder, to find qualified people.
Healthcare tells a similar story. Registered nurses and GPs remain the most undersupplied occupation groups in the country, a shortage that shows no sign of easing given an ageing population and rising demand for aged care and community health services.
Education is not far behind. Secondary teachers in maths and science, along with early childhood educators, appear on shortage lists in every state and territory, with regional areas facing the most acute gaps.
Technology is the one bright spot moving in the opposite direction, at least on paper. Cybersecurity and software engineering roles continue to grow, with tens of thousands of new positions forecast over the next few years. But even here, the challenge is not a lack of interest, it is a lack of people with the right blend of technical skill and local experience.
What makes this data useful for New Zealand employers is not the numbers themselves but the pattern behind them. Australia’s shortages are concentrated in exactly the sectors New Zealand businesses have been struggling with too.
Construction firms across the country have spent much of the past year reporting difficulty finding qualified builders, electricians and other trade specialists, a challenge compounded by a wave of experienced workers approaching retirement without enough apprentices coming through behind them.
Healthcare providers are wrestling with the same nursing and GP shortages, often competing directly with Australian employers for the same pool of candidates given how easily skilled New Zealanders can work across the Tasman.
That competition cuts both ways. When Australia tightens its skilled migration settings or sweetens its visa pathways, it changes where mobile talent decides to go, and New Zealand feels the effects almost immediately.
A tradesperson weighing up a move to Perth or Brisbane is not just comparing wages, they are comparing pathways to residency, cost of living and how quickly an employer can actually get them into a role. Australia’s shift toward a living, regularly updated shortage list, rather than a once a year snapshot, means the goalposts can move faster than New Zealand employers are used to.
There are lessons here that go beyond migration policy. Australia’s experience shows that shortages do not resolve themselves once an industry starts advertising harder. They ease when employers invest in training pipelines, when apprenticeship pathways are genuinely attractive to younger workers, and when businesses widen their search beyond the traditional candidate pool to include older workers, career changers and people relocating from overseas.
New Zealand’s own reforms to the Skilled Migrant Category, aimed at making it easier for employers to sponsor experienced overseas workers into hard to fill roles, reflect the same recognition that migration alone cannot fix a structural shortage.
For New Zealand businesses, the practical takeaway is to treat Australia’s shortage list as an early warning system rather than a foreign problem. If trades, healthcare and teaching are proving difficult to staff across the Tasman, the same roles are likely to get harder to fill here too, particularly as experienced workers retire and Australian employers actively court the same talent pool with better pay or faster residency pathways.
Businesses that get ahead of this by investing in local training, building genuine career pathways for apprentices and widening their hiring criteria will be better placed than those waiting for the labour market to sort itself out.
There is also a lesson in how Australia is measuring the problem itself. Moving from a once a year occupation list to a living document updated through ongoing stakeholder surveys means policymakers there get a clearer, faster read on where shortages are worsening rather than relying on stale annual snapshots.
New Zealand employers who track shortages informally, through how long a role sits open or how many applicants show relevant experience, are effectively doing the same thing at business level, and that information is worth taking seriously rather than treating each hard to fill vacancy as an isolated case.
The shortages will not disappear on their own. Employers who start planning now, rather than reacting once a role has sat vacant for months, stand the best chance of building a workforce that holds up under the pressure both countries are facing.
