New Zealand is in a tough place regarding trained workers. Firstly the job market for young people is pretty much international. Both my sons work in Australia. NZ paid for their education and university training but the Australian economy gets the benefit. Especially out in the outback where young Australians don't seem to want to work. Australian salaries are higher and houses mostly cheaper. NZ housing is totally ridiculous which is pretty much why young people demand the high salaries. Baby boomers used the housing market as a proxy for investment and now no young people can afford them.
I have a friend trying to hire engineering staff. He needs registered civil engineers so basically 5 years uni plus registration. He just cannot get them and so he is turning down work all the time.
Our education institutions seem to have done a great job in training fine arts, hotel management , and other soft type qualifications but very few technical and STEM qualified people.
The one positive I do see from my own experience is that as in every generation there are some really great kids. I would not like to compete against our best students. They are really good. But almost everyone I know is working overseas at twice the salery they would get at home. And they do work. Most times I call my daughter she is still in the office at 8 at night. My son is dealing with phone calls from all over the world at 1 am. The international nature of the work and 24/7 communication means the hours are ridiculous.
But at the other end of the employment scale unfortunately NZ has grown a large group of people who have fallen through the gaps. When I finished school the people who were not academic worked on the roads, the railway farming labouring etc. But now many people don't seem capable of doing those jobs. They are unreliable , very poor skills, bad literacy and essentially unable to handle life in a modern economy. I'm a huge beleiver in education because it took me from a labourer to uni grad and 30 years of international work. But so many young people waste the educational opportunities available to them. Frankly drugs, gangs and crime. It's bad at the tough end of our society. We are getting drive by shootings most every day in South Auckland. Many overseas people see NZ as some kind of a paradise. But it isn't much like that in some places anymore.
We have a crazy situation with at one end young people who can barely read or get out of bed living on benefit and at the other end really highly qualified people on huge salaries working 12 hour plus 6 days a week.
Neither of which is good or sustainable in the long term.
