This report presents the employment forecasts by industries, broad occupational and skill groups to 2024, and is an update of the medium to long-term outlook released in December 2014.

The employment projections finalised in November 2015 are guided by the macroeconomic outlook from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER)’s Consensus Forecasts covering exports, imports and consumption growth for the 2016-19 period. The projection for the long-term (2019 to 2024) is informed by longer term regional and trading partner economic growth projections made by international agencies.

Employment growth is forecast to remain above the long-run average (1.7 per cent) in the medium-term (to 2019) but decline slightly afterwards. Increasing labour supply constraints arising from an ageing population, along with lower net migration, underpin the long-term outlook. This employment outlook is based on average annual GDP growth of about 2.9 per cent and 2.8 per cent over the 2014-19 and 2019-24 periods, respectively.

Growth will be strongest for highly-skilled occupations, such as managers and professionals. Business services will be a major driver of employment growth in the medium-term, but decline in importance over the long-term. The hospitality sector will provide steady employment growth over the entire forecast period when tourism is expected to be strong.

In the medium-term, strong employment growth is anticipated to be matched by increasing labour supply resulting from elevated net migration.

These forecasts are used to inform Ministry’s medium and long-term policy advice relating to immigration policy settings and priority setting for tertiary education and industry training.