Ten Years of Change in New Zealand Manufacturing Employment

Abstract

Ten years have now passed since New Zealand began the liberalisation and restructuring of its economy. Basically we have gone from a country where a young person could leave school at fifteen and get a low-skilled job in the freezing works of the electrical assembly industry, to one where few such jobs now exist and there is nearly 10% unemployment. It is now clear that the manufacturing sector has been responsible for about 75% of the net job loss. This paper takes an overview of the research and data now available to document the specifics of the change in manufacturing employment ,focusing on the causes, policies, and the results of the changes, and describes the character of the 'lean, mean' sector which has emerged after the ten years of change.