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Employment Action Plan

The Employment Action Plan presents the Government’s vision for the labour market to support people into work and lift economic outcomes for New Zealand.

About the Plan

The Employment Action Plan will help deliver the Government’s commitment to support more New Zealanders into work and give them greater opportunities to realise their potential.

It lays out in one place the Government’s vision to support people to gain and retain employment, and the steps needed to achieve this. It is a concise, focussed document that clearly communicates the Government’s approach and the collaboration that will support success across the labour market.
The plan was published in August 2024, and is a starting point for how the Government will lift labour market outcomes, which are key to achieving the Government’s targets for the economy and ultimately delivering better results for New Zealanders.

The vision for the Employment Action Plan is: “We will support people – across different population groups, different regions and facing different challenges – to use their skills so that people can lead happier, healthier and more productive lives, contribute to the economy, support communities, businesses, industries and sectors and share in New Zealand’s prosperity”.
It has 3 goals to support this vision and 12 key actions for Ministers to drive progress. The actions are led via the Social Development and Employment, Education, Immigration, Tertiary Education and Skills, and Regional Development portfolios, and agency leads from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), Ministry of Education (MoE), Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).

Plan goals

Goal 1

Help people get into work quickly and stay in work, reducing negative impact of job-loss and time on benefit for people and the economy, and changing longer-term trajectories for people with a view to improving employment outcomes, limiting increases in benefit numbers and reducing them over time.

Actions

Use community providers, clear obligations and targeted incentives to get young people off welfare and into work. (MSD)
- Support 4,000 additional young jobseekers in phone-based case management including by providing individual job plans.
- Implement community-based job coaches for young jobseekers.
Ensure the welfare system is focussed on effectively supporting people who can work into jobs. (MSD)
- Target MSD case management to specific cohorts to support the Jobseeker target.
- Introduce new approaches to supporting jobseekers, including seminars supporting job profiles/CVs/training and new work check-ins for jobseekers in their first 2 weeks on benefit and after 6 months.
- Clearly communicate to clients that they must comply with their obligations or risk being sanctioned, by implementing the Traffic Light System and considering options for non-financial sanctions, including community work experience and money management.
Address persistent disadvantage, by exploring a focus on key points in people’s lives when interventions are more likely to be effective. (MSD)
- Develop a life-course-derived approach to help reduce persistent disadvantage in the labour market.
- Provide advice identifying medium to long-term work to reduce persistent disadvantage.
- Publish a refreshed Child and Youth Strategy.

Goal 2

Support people to have the skills they need to succeed in work, increasing earning potential and reducing benefit in-flows and encouraging continued upskilling in-work for improved productivity and resilience.

Actions

Develop tools to support the provision of in-work-training, and improve investment in training-related active labour market programmes. (MBIE/MSD)
Reform the vocational education and training system to ensure it responds to the needs of learners, industries and communities. (MOE/TEC)
Refresh the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa so they promote knowledge-rich, clearly defined pathways to further education or work, grounded in the science of learning. (MOE)
Implement evidence-based instruction in literacy and mathematics. (MOE)

Goal 3

Improve employers’ access to skills, employees’ access to jobs that make best use of their skills and enable students and employees to make informed decisions about investing in their skills.

Actions

Provide advice on the establishment of an “Essential Worker” workforce planning mechanism to better plan for skill or labour shortages in the long term. (MBIE)
Make changes to work visas to ensure settings are better focussed on facilitating the right mix of skilled migrants and that New Zealanders are first in line for jobs. (MBIE)
Establish and support a University Advisory Group to provide advice on the challenges and opportunities in the university system. (MOE/TEC)
Provide transparent, future-focussed and accessible careers information and advice aligning work and learning pathways to skills, supporting students and workers to make informed decisions. (TEC)
- Provide transparent and reliable labour market indicators to show occupational and other skills information. (TEC/MBIE)
- Facilitate connections between schools, employers, and tertiary education organisations to ensure students are better prepared for employment and/or further education and training.
- Ensure students and workers have access to career resources, information and support to make informed decisions.
Grow regional economies by improving resilience and increasing productivity. (MBIE)
- Establish a Regional Infrastructure Fund with $1.2 billion in capital funding over the Parliamentary term.
- Develop a sustainable funding model for Regional Development investments including the operation of Crown Regional Holdings Limited.
- Improve the management of high-risk projects and increase the transparency of reporting in the Regional Development portfolio.

Read the Employment Action Plan

You can download a copy of the Employment Action Plan below.