A Northland man says he's applied to at least 50 jobs this year but despite having multiple skills and being keen, he can barely get a reply let alone an offer.
Andy, 61, stopped working in 2018 due to an injury. He spent several years on ACC recovering but is now keen to get back into work as the cost of living rises and the money he gets isn't going as far as he would like. He's also sick of sitting around at home so after the pandemic started to calm down, he began searching for a job - a task he didn't think much of given New Zealand's extremely low unemployment rate.
Andy is a certified forklift driver, has his class 2 truck licence and has completed a first aid course. But despite that, he can barely get a response from the many jobs he's applied for.
Aotearoa's unemployment rate hit 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 and again in the first quarter of this year. It's the lowest it has been since 1986 and as a result employers across the board are crying out for staff.
And the transport industry is no different. Two major trucking companies recently told NZ Herald the staffing shortages were dire, with one saying they had 15 vacancies across the country.
A group of industry leaders also recently highlighted the issue claiming the country is facing a shortage of 8000 truck drivers in an open letter to Immigration Minister Michael Wood.
But despite the shortages, Andy said he quickly realised finding a job might be harder than he thought.
While he did manage to get two job offers, one fell through when he couldn't find adequate accommodation in Auckland and the other had a job description which Andy said was very out of touch with the hours.
"I did manage to get a position, but it meant I had to relocate, and the pay was not brilliant - $24 an hour, to cover rent and fuel in Auckland.
"I would have taken it, as it's always easier to find work when you're already working, but accommodation fell through at the last minute and the employer needed to fill the role quickly."
The 61-year-old is desperate to work, partly to give him a sense of purpose but also because the increasing cost of living and high inflation is making it nearly impossible for him to survive on his ACC payments.
"Finances are becoming a real issue and I'm not getting any younger and I'm never going to be able to retire," Andy told Newshub. "So yeah, I need a job. Plus it does my head in, sitting around with nothing to do."
He said of the 50-plus jobs he's applied for this year only around five percent responded, with most of them being generic rejection letters.
He believes a lot of employers are struggling to find workers because they're either offering terrible pay or insane workloads.
"I did get offered a truck driving position, but it was starting at five in the morning, unloading all the trucks from Auckland and loading your own truck, then going out and doing whatever you had to do.
"You're not going to fit all that into 13 hours. And they've been advertising, advertising, advertising, advertising and I see that they've actually changed the hours of the job. So obviously someone said, 'Well, I'm not doing those hours, you can't do them - they're not sustainable''."
Andy said he thinks low unemployment is forcing some businesses to look at their pay and working conditions.
He thinks other businesses are hurting their chances of finding staff when they simply don't reply to job seekers because people remember and it puts them off the company.
Either way, he was shocked by his struggles given how many employers say they're in desperate need of workers.
Is it really a 'worker's job market'?
Labour shortages have been a consistent story in 2022 with nearly every industry bearing the brunt.
As a result, wages are up and industry experts have repeatedly said it's a "worker's job market" but as Andy's experience highlights, not everyone is benefiting to the same extent.
Figures from Statistics New Zealand show median weekly earnings from wages and salaries rose by 8.8 percent to $1189 in the year to the June 2022 quarter.
And people are working more with the number of full-time wage and salary earners increasing by 102,300 (up 5.9 percent) to 1,848,600 in the same time period. The number of part-time earners also decreased by 38,200 (down 7.9 percent) to 442,300.
But it seems the lowest-paid Kiwis are benefiting the least from the tight labour market.
Associate professor of economics at the University of Waikato Michael Cameron said while low unemployment has given workers more bargaining power - it's impacted some Kiwis more than others.
Cameron noted more bargaining power also doesn't mean workers can simply demand substantially higher wages but instead they can push for "somewhat better pay and conditions and employers are more likely to agree".
"This shift in bargaining power is why some employers are now willing to offer significant signing bonuses or better work conditions and benefits, including flexible hours or free insurance," Cameron wrote in a Conversation article in August.
"[But] if you look closer at the types of jobs where signing bonuses and more generous benefits packages are being offered, however, you will quickly realise those are not features of jobs at the bottom end of the wage spectrum."
Cameron said many low-income workers are in part-time, fixed-term or precarious employment and they're not benefiting from low unemployment as much as higher-income Kiwis in more stable jobs.
"A period of full employment may allow some low-wage workers to move into higher paying jobs, or jobs that are less precarious and/or offer better work conditions. That relies on the workers having the appropriate skills and experience for higher-paying jobs, or for increasingly desperate employers to adjust their employment standards to meet those of the available job applicants," he wrote.
"Overall it is clear not all low-wage workers benefit from full employment. Those who remain in low-wage jobs may even be worse off in a full-employment economy. If wage demands from other workers feed through into higher prices of goods and services it will exacerbate cost-of-living increases.
"Although a full employment economy seems like a net positive, not everyone benefits equally, and we shouldn't ignore that some low-wage workers remain vulnerable."
Cameron also said while unemployment is incredibly low there are still 90,000 people not in jobs who are actively seeking work.
"As the economy reaches a peak in the cycle, employers increase production, requiring a high number of workers. The availability of these extra jobs reduces the number of unemployed, eventually reaching full employment," he wrote in The Conversation.
"But that doesn't mean that when there is full employment there is no unemployment at all. There will still be some employment that is 'frictional' (because it takes time for unemployed workers to be matched to jobs) and 'structural' (because some unemployed workers don't have the right skills for the available jobs)."
