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It’s the hardest time in 30 years to find a job. This is why — Stuff
A prominent figure in Auckland’s hospitality scene recently shared a video of a fast food restaurant at an airport where scores of people had queued up in front of machines to order their meals.
There were no staff in sight. Instead, there were large glowing self-checkout screens, inviting customers to select their preferred options.
Presumably, there were still staff at the back cooking the food, but this scene was emblematic of the way work is being changed faster than many of us realise.
“Sadly, the biggest losers are the unskilled kids (and anyone else) who once could work in places like this,” the business owner said.
“The future will not get easier for unskilled workers. AI and robot automation are advancing whether we like it or not.”
As the world changes and businesses look to cut costs, roles like these are being eliminated.
But the impact isn’t limited to those classic retail or fast food roles.
The changes sweeping through the workplace are also hitting white-collar workers.
Students who now graduate from university will find it harder to get a foot in the door, because of the growing belief that much of the work that once defined an entry-level position is being automated – a context in which human labour becomes superfluous (and expensive).
“In law, we’re already producing five times as many graduates as the available job opportunities,” says New Zealand entrepreneur and founder of Perpetual Guardian Andrew Barnes, who explains this ratio will only become worse in the coming years.
“I wouldn’t want to be training as a computer programmer at the moment. Arguably, I don’t want to be training as a lawyer at the moment. And probably accountants are largely going to be a creature of the past.”
The Guardian reported earlier this year the number of new entry-level jobs in the UK has dived by 32% since the launch of ChatGPT.
And local jobs data is starting to show trends that paint a similar picture. The problem is that if young workers are battling to get a foot in the door, how do they go about building wealth and financial prosperity long-term? And what will the delays cost them in terms of these lost years?
A terrible job market
Some of the struggles young workers face today come down to the impact (whether real or perceived) of artificial intelligence, but the current economy certainly hasn’t helped.
In its November Monetary Policy Statement, the Reserve Bank said that the job-finding rate was the lowest it’s been in 30 years.
The job-finding rate tracks the share of workers moving from unemployment to employment. In other words it tells you how difficult it is to find a job if you’re currently out of work.
As things stand, it is currently more difficult to find work than it was during the GFC or the dotcom bubble.
If you’re on the outside, looking in, you can tap on the glass, but few seem willing to open the door right now.
The good news is that it seems we’ve hit the bottom and things are starting to turn around, but the this recovery is not uniform.
Caitlin Langlands, the marketing manager at recruitment app Zeil, tells me it’s difficult to track the job market for entry level roles for recent graduates, but one way to do it is by looking at jobs that require at a least a bachelor’s degree.
Langlands says those types of jobs are up 7% nationally year on year (bearing in mind that this comes off a very low base), but there is significant variation across the regions.
While Wellington (up 17%) and Canterbury (up 18%) have seen some decent opportunity growth, Auckland remains flat with virtually no growth.
Langlands says that this is telling, when considering that 57% of all internships and grad roles posted on Zeil for 2025 were in Auckland.
“Auckland has no growth,” she says.
“Typically, this where young graduates would go for job opportunities.”
Langlands says many companies are doing it tough at the moment, making it difficult to justify graduate programmes to the extent they would have existed previously.
The glut of bachelor degree holders also means young graduates today face a greater level of competition than those that came before them. The onus now rests on young workers to set themselves apart in ways they perhaps didn’t have to in the past, says Langlands.
“In the past you’d get a degree and you’d probably get a job afterwards, but it isn’t that easy any more, says Langlands.
“In conversations I’ve had with business leaders, many suggest that the ones who do well are those who have been engaging with their industry throughout their degree. They’re maybe running side projects or engaging in interesting ways. In doing that, you’re coming in as a value-adding employee, rather than someone who needs a programme to help with upskilling.”
The lost dollars
The repercussions of that graph on the job-finding rate are two-fold for those looking to build their wealth over the longterm. Young workers who trying to get into the workforce will see their long-term plans pushed out as they try to find work. On the other hand, more senior workers who are currently out of work or in declining industries will be eating into their emergency funds as they look for something new. Neither of these situations are conducive to allowing wealth to compound over time.
This is partly why Mastercard senior economist Katrina Ell placed so much emphasis on the job market recently when she spoke to me about economy recovering.
“We need to pay incredibly close attention to what happens with the labour market,” she said.
“It’s one thing for rates to be coming down, but if job prospects don’t materially improve, then we’re not going to see households get more confident and more exuberant when it comes to spending… At the heart of what drives Kiwis is their employment prospects and what that will look like over the next six to 12 months.”
For most people, our careers will be the single most important income earner over the course of our lives, but it’s important to remember that most careers don’t run a linear path. Earnings will go up or down over time and there may be pauses due to redundancy or health factors.
The issue we now have is that these pauses seem to be taking longer and younger workers face a challenge even getting started.
The percentage of unemployed young people (those age 15 to 24) is 13.8% versus the national average of 5.3%.
The statistics are equally concerning in the UK (15.3%) and even worse in Italy (20.7%).
The crumbling promise
Perpetual Guardian founder Barnes worries that we’ve sold an entire generation a promise that employers will not be able (or willing) to live up to.
“What worries me is that we’ve gone all in on getting a workforce that doesn’t do traditional work, but does the knowledge economy,” he says.
“We have lots and lots of kids going to university doing degrees, but not getting any practical skills. We’ve actually pushed them into things where they are suddenly become vulnerable, such as the law, accounting and business.”
As AI sweeps through those industries, Barnes anticipates that businesses will start making calculations to determine the best course of action – and this doesn’t bode well for workers (many of who are saddled with student debt).
“It will come down to simple economics,” he says.
“If through a minimum wage you eventually make it too expensive to employ a young person or a recently graduated student, then a business will find a way to remove that cost. This is the real risk of automation.”
Barnes says we’ve seen the consequences of this before in the taxi industry, where the very regulations designed to protect the worker eventually gave birth to Uber (an organisation roundly criticised for its treatment of workers).
This is not a statement on whether the minimum wage is good or bad, but rather a reminder that businesses will do what’s in their best interests.
As automation becomes more prominent, there will be a period of what’s referred to “as creative destruction” where old industries and long-established roles are altered or utterly erased.
It’s difficult to tell at this stage which industries will struggle and which will survive, but the old story of the Luddites fighting automation by destroying power looms in textile mills remains informative.
Years after those looms were destroyed, the efficiency delivered in the textile industry created roles that no one had previously imagined. This didn’t make it any less painful to get there, but we can take optimism from the insight that technology also breeds new opportunity – eventually.
– Stuff
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新西蘭就業市場進入30年來最嚴峻時期
新西蘭儲備銀行最新數據顯示，當前就業環境已滑落至過去30年來最困難水平。無論是剛畢業的年輕人，還是希望重新進入職場的資深員工，都正面對一個門檻更高、機會更少、競爭更激烈的勞動力市場。
就業“入口”正在消失
奧克蘭一位餐飲業知名業者近日分享的一段視頻，引發了廣泛討論。畫面中，機場一家麥當勞內排起長隊，但顧客面對的不是櫃台員工，而是一排自助點餐機。現場幾乎看不到前台工作人員。這一幕被視為當前就業變化的縮影：技術正在以遠超多數人想象的速度，取代原本屬於人的工作崗位。這位業者直言，自動化與人工智能對低技能崗位的衝擊首當其衝，而“最大受害者，往往是原本依靠這些工作進入職場的年輕人”。
但變化並不止於零售和餐飲業。白領崗位同樣承壓人工智能對文職工作的衝擊，正在削弱傳統“入門崗位”的存在基礎。過去，畢業生可以通過基礎研究、文件整理、數據分析等工作累積經驗，但如今，這類工作正被算法和自動化系統迅速取代。
Perpetual Guardian 創辦人、企業家 Andrew Barnes 指出，新西蘭在多個“知識型行業”已出現明顯供需失衡：• 法律專業畢業生數量，已是崗位需求的 5 倍；• 會計、商業、程序設計等領域，也正面臨類似擠壓。Barnes 直言：“我現在不會建議年輕人去當程序員，也不會建議去學法律，甚至連會計都可能逐漸消失。”數據證實：找工作比金融危機時期更難
儲備銀行在最新《貨幣政策聲明》中指出，新西蘭的就業轉化率（job-finding rate）已跌至30年來最低點。該指標衡量的是失業人口成功轉為就業的比例，換言之，它反映的是：如果你失業了，現在找工作的難度。
儲備銀行指出，目前找工作的難度，甚至超過了全球金融危機與互聯網泡沫破裂時期。
就業復蘇不均 奧克蘭“停滯”
招聘平台 Zeil 的數據顯示，要求至少擁有本科學歷的崗位數量，年增幅約 7%，但這一增長高度不均：
• 惠靈頓：+17%
• 坎特伯雷：+18%
• 奧克蘭：幾乎零增長
這點尤為關鍵，因為 57% 的實習與畢業生崗位集中在奧克蘭。換言之，年輕人最集中的城市，卻幾乎沒有新增機會。
Zeil 市場經理 Caitlin Langlands 表示，許多企業在經濟壓力下，已縮減或取消畢業生培訓計劃，使得“沒有經驗的人更難被錄用”。年輕人承受長期代價官方數據顯示，新西蘭 15–24 歲青年失業率高達 13.8%，遠高於全國平均的 5.3%。
類似情況也出現在其他國家：
• 英國：15.3%
• 意大利：20.7%
問題不僅是“暫時沒工作”，而是延遲進入職場將造成長期財富損失：
• 收入累積被推遲
• 復利效應被削弱
• 儲蓄與資產配置起步更晚
Mastercard 資深經濟學家 Katrina Ell 指出，就業前景是家庭信心與消費復蘇的核心變量。如果就業改善跟不上降息節奏，經濟復蘇將難以真正落地。
被“承諾”的一代？
Barnes 進一步警告，整個社會可能對年輕人“過度承諾”了知識經濟的回報，卻忽視了現實需求。
“我們鼓勵所有孩子上大學，卻沒有同步確保他們獲得真正可轉化的技能，”他說，“當自動化進來，這些人反而最脆弱。”
他指出，企業最終會遵循經濟理性：當人力成本高於技術替代成本，崗位就會消失——這正是自動化加速的根本邏輯。
結語：陣痛與重構歷史告訴我們，技術變革往往伴隨著“創造性破壞”。舊崗位消失的同時，新產業也會出現，但過渡期往往漫長而痛苦。
對當前求職者而言，現實已非常清晰：
進入職場比過去任何時候都難，而單靠學歷，已不再是通行證。
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