Outcome 2: Skilled people engaged in safe and productive work

Skilled and productive labour and safe workplaces are essential attributes of long-term economic growth. A strong economy also needs the right mix of skills and labour supply to respond to global and domestic opportunities and shifts.

Growing the New Zealand labour market

MBIE works to understand the skill demand and supply in the New Zealand labour market, working with others to align options across education, employment and immigration.

This year saw significant changes to immigration settings, the disestablishment of the Regional Skill Leadership Groups, ongoing vocational education change and new job seeker targets. We continue to work with agencies and Ministers to improve the flow of people and align the right skills to the right employers.

MBIE leads the Sector Workforce Engagement Programme. We work with different sectors (tourism, horticulture, wine growing, aquaculture, dairy/ agriculture, road freight transport, construction and aged care) to identify important labour market issues and address these with unique labour market solutions. Significant achievements in the past 12 months include:

• working with the aquaculture industry to complete a worker survey, with a set of actions on retention strategies for the industry
• establishing a horticulture intelligence group to investigate and initiate workforce planning strategies.

Bringing people and skills to New Zealand

Immigration makes a vital contribution to  New Zealand’s economy, workforce and community. It reunites friends and families, provides employers with access to important skills and capital, supports educational institutions accessing international talent, contributes to New Zealand’s international and humanitarian commitments while maintaining the security and integrity of the border.

This year, we had high levels of interest in New Zealand, with more than 1.1 million visa decisions, including over 480,000 visitor visas granted. Visitors are a significant driver of economic activity and employment.

Supporting refugees is a core international obligation that MBIE helps the Government to meet. This year, 704 refugee and protection claims were assessed, the highest number of resolved claims since 2003/04. MBIE met the increased Refugee Quota for the second year in a row, welcoming 1,514 refugees through the Quota Programme.

We have also worked to improve our systems. Following customer feedback, MBIE continued to improve its online platform by making changes that allow customers to track the progress of their applications in real time and moving more visa categories online, including Permanent Resident Visas.

Migrant workers

We also had record high net migration to New Zealand this year, because of the return of migrant workers.

This included: 

• nearly 55,000 Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) applications decided and around 11,600 employers accredited under the AEWV policy
• over 680 applications decided under a new Skilled Migrant category visa and over 1,900 applications decided under the Parent category visa
• over 49,100 Working Holiday application decisions
• more than 90,000 student visa decisions.

These visa categories, and others, let New Zealand access the skills and capacity needed for stable economic growth and to address significant skill shortages.

With the influx of migrants, New Zealand also saw the effect of illegal behaviour by a small number of people. In response to allegations of exploitation and immigration fraud, concerning the AEWV, MBIE took a multi-pronged approach to help a number of migrants left in a vulnerable state. Investigators from MBIE’s Tenancy, Immigration and Labour Inspectorate teams led the investigation, which spanned multiple employers, properties and several immigration fraud concerns. A cross-MBIE taskforce responded to the welfare concerns of the affected migrants, to make sure they had food, housing and support while determining their immigration options. TAS worked jointly with Auckland Council to make sure suitable accommodation was put in place and that the 151 migrants involved were financially supported. A facilitative approach was taken to support the migrants in either returning to their country of origin or remaining in New Zealand on a suitable visa pathway.

A review of the AEWV (Bestwick review) focused on the scheme’s administration and mitigation of exploitation and irregular migration and was completed in February 2024. The review found the scheme did not work as intended and Immigration New Zealand could have done more to minimise the risk of abuse of the work visa system. We are working through 10 recommendations from the review and have delivered on 6 and are progressing the remaining 4.

Delivery of the AEWV scheme is a priority for MBIE, to make sure New Zealand has access to the skills needed to help address gaps in the labour market and grow the economy. We have worked with the Government to change and implement immigration requirements to align with the Government’s priorities. In April and June, changes were made to increase the requirements for work experience or demonstrated qualifications and English language requirements.

As part of our work to prevent and respond to migrant exploitation and enforce compliance with employment standards, this year, 624 immigration investigation cases were opened, of these 255 were allegations of migrant exploitation and 112 trafficking in persons. This resulted in 6 criminal prosecutions and an additional 1,736 individual actions spanning infringement notices, formal warnings and referrals to partner agencies.

In addition, the infringement scheme under the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Act 2023, launched in May 2024, gives MBIE the measures it needs to deter employers who exploit migrant workers and to act if exploitation offences are committed. Any employers who have been penalised and temporarily barred from hiring migrant workers will be published on the Immigration New Zealand website. This list aims to increase transparency in the immigration system.

Enabling a safe and productive work environment

We supported the Government’s agenda to enable more productive and safer working environments, including:

• amendments to the Employment Relations Act 2000 to extend the use of 90-day trials to all employers
• the Minimum Wage Review, with new rates coming into force in April 2024
• repeal of the Fair Pay Agreements Act 2022
• advancing plans to consult on changes to the Holidays Act 2003, including simplifying calculations around holiday and sick pay, a longstanding concern for workers, employers and payroll providers
• advancing plans to consult on the purpose and per- formance of the health and safety regulatory system
• work to ensure ACC’s regulations are efficient, effective and current.

Employment mediation

Applications for our Employment Mediation Service rose by 23%. Employers and employees sought our help to resolve work-related problems commonly involving dismissals, redundancies, restructuring and insolvencies, reflecting current economic and labour market conditions. In response to higher demand, we delivered 16% more dispute resolution interventions (18,916) across our certification of private records of settlement, early resolution and scheduled mediation services. We broadly maintained our customer satisfaction, with 78% of our customers rating our dispute resolution services as good or very good, and the settlement rate for mediation was 67%. Despite increasing demand, we maintained our wait times for certification and early resolution at service levels across the year as a whole. However, wait times increased for scheduled mediation services over the second half of the year due to significant peaks in demand. We had over 1,000 more applications for mediation than in 2022/23.

Employment standards

A significant increase also occurred in reporting of employment standard concerns, as well as migrant exploitation, which rose significantly, with 3,925 reports this year compared with 933 last year. We delivered over 5,000 employment standards interventions, a 59% increase on the previous year. Timeliness of investigations by the Labour Inspectorate continued to improve, with 90% completed in 12 months and 69% in 6 months. We assessed 91% of reports of exploitation within 5 days for eligibility for the migrant exploitation protection visa, to support workers to rapidly leave potentially exploitative situations.

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