Future Demand for Skills in New Zealand Compared with Forecasts for some Western Countries: Relative Importance of Expansion and Retirement Demand

Abstract

Future demand for skills is of considerable interest to policy makers and training providers of many countries, including New Zealand. Occupational employment projection have been implemented in countries such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia. These methods usually take into account growth in GDP of key industries, changes in labour productivity and the long­term changes in the occupational shares of employment by industry. In New Zealand, an assessment of the future prospects for employment by industries and occupations comparable to the overseas approaches has been undertaken over the past few years. These estimates have been used to assess the skills needs in the expanding segments of the labour market. In this paper we compare our forecasts of occupational employment growth with public sector agencies in other countries. The key forecast results of demand for high level skills, for specific broad occupational groups as well as for industry or sector groups for each of these countries as they recover from the economic downturn of varying magnitude and nature are discussed. We focus on both the expansion demand (due to new positions created) and the replacement demand (owing to current positions being required to be filled due to retirement, migration and job mobility) for New Zealand and other countries as applicable.