Govt ponders massive skills shift for workforce
So far, given the scale of job chaos, it’s only a trickle; 23,000 people signed on for the unemployment benefit between March 17 and April 10, as the lockdown, and the cessation of most businesses, started to bite. But it’s about to become a torrent.
By Friday afternoon, the Government’s wage subsidy was supporting 1.6 million workers – half the entire workforce. Not every worker receiving the wage subsidy will lose their job – many are in construction, which is one of the areas tipped for boom times once the lockdown restrictions end. But it’s still expected that potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs will be gone for good.
The Government has pledged billions of dollars to help kick-start the economy and give jobs to some – infrastructure czar Shane Jones says a wishlist of $100 billion in projects has been provided to the Government by local councils and business. Not all of them can be funded and even after the country moves from alert level 4 to 3, social distancing requirements will make many of them difficult.
But Jones is confident some of the projects will be able to get under way immediately.
‘‘There is short-term relief, mid-term build and long-term sustainability. It covers the whole gamut,’’ Jones said.
But matching up the skills of those who have lost jobs with work in areas where there will be most opportunity will not be easy. Many of the new jobs will be in construction, in horticulture, manufacturing or the primary industries. The jobless will include retail workers, flight crew, administrative, or tourism workers and others.
Retraining the workforce on such a massive scale would be unprecedented.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said there was a huge amount of work being done on industry specific recovery plans.
‘‘There will need to be a significant programme of retraining, both for people who lose jobs and people who are in work and needing to be redeployed, and so we’re trying to do a cross-cutting piece of work in that area.’’
There may be 200,000 people in the broader tourism and hospitality sector alone with significant retraining needs, and that would be replicated across other industries.
That upskilling will likely include the Government helping more people into their own business – particularly women, who were likely to be hardest hit by job losses.
‘‘There is a real gender impact of job loss; if you look particularly at a sector like tourism, hospitality, or retail, there is a disproportionate number of women in those industries.
‘‘One of the things I’ve been thinking about in recent days is trying to take some lessons from . . . the past and using this as an opportunity to support people to create their own businesses. There’s going to be a desire for people to buy local more often; how do we support people through that into that kind of activity, along with other industries?’’
But there would also be a focus on more locally manufactured products, an area where an increasing number of women were already working, particularly with the use of more sophisticated technology.
In other areas, such as the primary sector, the Government would be looking at how to ‘‘build off our strengths’’ and more toward more domestic processing of primary goods: ‘‘Let’s look at the primary sector and think of what we can do more of here.’’
That might include leveraging off our horticulture sector to produce skincare products, for instance, right through to added value in dairy and meat.
But it was going to take time for businesses to generate income and for people to upskill.
Our handling of the coronavirus pandemic, meanwhile, was an important part of the New Zealand story.
‘‘One of the things we hope we will be able to say to the world is, we have eliminated the virus and got on top of it. In a way, it’s part of the New Zealand Inc story – the clean, green image and so on. It’s a big part of who we are.’’
Former trade negotiator Charles Finny said the obvious losers in the short-term were industries such as tourism and international education, while most of the services sector would struggle to survive through the next few months.
Finny expects industries such as agriculture and primary products will recover faster than others. In some industries there might even be an opportunity for upscaling.
‘‘Anything to do with making it easier to work remotely, like IT support and development of software applications, have probably done very well through this time and will continue to do very well,’’ he said.
There are likely to also be more opportunities in the entertainment industry.
‘‘Now that the movie industry and television industry have been hugely impacted by the lockdown, people are going to be craving things like gaming and other types of entertainment.
‘‘I think this industry could rebound quite strongly, but we are probably looking more towards the end of the year or next year.’’
‘‘There will need to be a significant programme of retraining.’’ Finance Minister Grant Robertson