"What we do following on from that is looking at how people are getting jobs, how do they look at employment and getting those skills?
"The labour market and employment has changed quite significantly - in the 80s and 90s many more New Zealanders were employed in service employment face-to-face. Now it's more manufacturing jobs.
"We're more likely to be non-standard contract, fixed term, third-party or portfolio - 10 per cent of the population will be working more than one job."
Mr Spoonley has researched topics from population to employment, race relations and migration issues in New Zealand for the past 30 years, publishing 28 books in that time.
In 2010, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of California Berkeley, then a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Goettingen in 2013. The same year he was named Distinguished Professor, Massey University's highest academic title.
His recent projects are the result of an external grant to carry out studies on immigrants, New Zealand's demographic future and where we will be in 2036 - particularly in terms of regional growth.
"One thing we are seeing is structural aging [where] there are a lot of people in the over-65 age group but the younger cohorts are getting smaller [as] there are not as many children being born." One concerning pattern was negative outcomes for Hawke's Bay's young people who are falling into the poverty trap - with low participation in early childhood education and high numbers of reported harm or neglect to children.
These factors lead to diminished success in education, soaring youth unemployment and result in more offending.
Meanwhile, teens who completed secondary education were likely to become a statistic of the "brain drain" of bright young minds flocking to New Zealand's cities and further afield.
"Quite often skills can't be obtained in the regions. The challenge Hawke's Bay faces is you get these 20-somethings leaving the region - then the region struggles to retain these people or get them back," he says.
An issue arises where the majority of young people left behind leave school and fail to follow up with further studies or employment.
"The evidence is those people not only face short-term difficulties but long term, they are 'scarred'. Hawke's Bay has to look at the welfare of those communities. Making sure they have got access to education and training is absolutely vital."
Mr Spoonley has a term for people between the ages of 15 and 24, who suffer the effects of this "significant shortfall" - NEET. which stands for not in education, employment or training.
Their situation is exacerbated by employers who increasingly require some form of post-secondary education.
"Jobs that didn't used to need degrees, employers now hire people who do - it's called the 'credential creep'." Size also dictates employment, large centres really attract jobs and employers."
Hawke's Bay falls "in the middle" of regional New Zealand for population growth and a lack of jobs, but with the right mode of thinking we could turn that around, Mr Spoonley says.
"It depends which part of Hawke's Bay you are talking about, when you look at the population in Napier it will grow a little bit while Wairoa and CHB will decrease.
"I think regions need to look after their own interest, the literature shows a collaboration does the region good, we need a vision for the future and to go out and really aggressively push to do that.
"One area we could focus on more is boosting growth in the right areas by highlighting the benefits of living here to attract immigrants.
"Hawke's Bay has very high amenity values. It's got a great lifestyle, the reason immigrants come to New Zealand is for the lifestyle, it has good housing stock, good leisure and facilities, good climate, good food sources. They should be attracted to Hawke's Bay.
"If you want immigrants you need to market it, employers need to get together to identify what they can do ," Mr Spoonley said.
