Efforts to boost NZ digital workforce to fill demand

NZTech says the push is on to put more people into digital jobs, as a means to building economic growth and helping businesses scale up to size with a New Zealand-base workforce.

The industry association said the tech sector had been adding about 5000 digital jobs in each of the past 10 years, and estimated each of those jobs resulted in more than four indirect jobs, such as managers, marketers and administrators.

Association chief executive Graeme Muller said about 4000 of the jobs had been filled by experienced and skilled immigrants, to fill a growing gap in the labour market, but those jobs generated plenty of others.

"The research shows that for every new role we put into the into a digital tech role it creates 4.8, or 4.9 peripheral roles," he said, adding that New Zealand could not yet fill those tech roles from the domestic market.

"At the end of 2019 and across to 2020, only 1800 students left high school to start some sort of IT qualification, so it's not many, and we need to boost that up and get a lot more people excited and interested," he said.

In addition, Muller said some 200 firms surveyed late last year were found to have 2000 open jobs for senior experienced people, while the public sector had 700 unfilled tech vacancies.

"So there's lots of really good quality jobs," he said, adding it was important to provide both short courses to upskill people as well as develop a longer pipeline through schools, while continuing to recruit from overseas.

"What we don't want them [tech firms] doing is ending up having to build big teams in other countries."

Muller said the government's draft digital transformation plan was helpful in that it was focused on building industry collaboration to support growth and training as the main drivers for the tech sector's development.

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