Too much work, not enough staff
Kim Kardashian came under fire for her comments about how ‘‘it seems like nobody wants to work these days’’ – but some small to medium business owners agree.
The latest MYOB small to medium enterprise (SME) Snapshot – a survey of more than 500 local SMEs – revealed 59% of SMEs had increased wages, but about a third were still struggling to fill job vacancies.
Doug Jarvis, owner of two speciality Doug Jarvis Butchers stores in Mt Manganui and
Pā pā moa, was working seven days a week because he was eight staff members down.
This was despite the official unemployment rate being 3.3% in the three months to the end of June, according to Stats NZ.
Jarvis relied heavily on overseas workers and said it wasn’t worth advertising the jobs, when an ad on Trade Me cost more than $100 and he had had only one applicant in six weeks.
‘‘I’m working seven days a week, and it’s a killer. To the point where I’m like ‘I don’t want to go in today’, but I know I have to because I’m the owner.’’
In May, Jarvis, who has been a butcher for 38 years, was tipped to breaking point following breakins and thefts from his stores in Mt Maunganui and Pā pā moa.
The MYOB snapshot found a quarter of businesses had roles vacant. But the majority of businesses described their staffing levels as satisfactory (51%) or good (39%) based on what they needed to operate.
Jarvis was also struggling to get any teenagers to do part-time weekend work, and he’d noticed a change in behaviour in the last five years. ‘‘They’re just not interested in working whatsoever.’’
Jarvis had raised all of his employees’ wages to keep up with the cost of living.
Other sectors struggling to employ staff included SMEs operating in the manufacturing sector (57%) and construction and trades (37%). Almost half of the manufacturing sector businesses surveyed had roles vacant.
Insights from the survey also showed that SME confidence in the economy had fallen to a level close to that recorded at the beginning of the first national lockdown in March 2022 (79%).
More than 70% of SME owners and operators expected the economy to decline over the next 12 months, while just 17% believed an improvement was likely.