The following is a summary from a recently released report on Queenstown Lakes labour market conditions and the costs of labour shortages.
The borders have reopened and visitors are returning to Queenstown-Lakes. The additional demand is a lifeline for tourism businesses starved of revenue over the past couple of years. However, finding workers to service this demand remains an acute challenge, despite Queenstown-Lakes businesses offering faster wage increases than elsewhere in the country.
We know staffing remains a challenge because:
- Job ads are double their level from before the pandemic.
- The biggest lift in job ads continues to be in accommodation and food services, but this sector still has fewer people employed than this time last year.
- Jobseeker numbers and migrant workers on employer-assisted visas are lower than last year.
- 57% of businesses are struggling to fill unskilled roles and 78% can’t fill specialist roles.
What are the costs of labour shortages?
- 65% of local businesses are currently operating below 75% capacity.
- Finding staff is the factor most commonly cited by businesses as limiting their ability to grow and meet expectations of higher customer demand.
- If businesses are unable to adequately increase capacity to cater for the demands of visitors, then we risk losing out on some visitor spending. Every 1% of unmet total visitor demand over the year would be worth $30 million of lost spending to Queenstown.
- These risks aren’t just hypothetical – already during the month of June alone, it is estimated that as much as $3 million of international visitor spending went unmet.
How can we reduce Queenstown-Lakes’ worker shortages?
There are several areas where government support could help reduce labour shortages. These include:
- Investment in offshore campaigns to target international workers.
- Reducing the costs of applying for visas and invest in speeding up visa processing times.
- Raising awareness of customized secondary tax codes that ensure staff with multiple jobs do not pay too much tax.
- Ensuring there is financial support for businesses to invest in operating with a leaner workforce.
Not all actions require government intervention, there are also a range of locally-led actions which could help mitigate the effects of labour shortages. These include:
- Increased co-ordination between businesses of days they close or have reduced hours.
- Broadening recruitment to target different groups, eg. older residents, parents during school hours, casual employees, and remote workers.
- Develop packages of perks and benefits for workers to experience visitor activities to assist in worker attraction.
- Focusing on staff wellbeing.
- Explore opportunities for seasonal crossovers between industries with different seasonal patterns.
The full report is available here for download.