Public sector graduate jobs down 66% as Greens warn of exodus to Australia

Responses to Written Parliamentary Questions show graduate-specific positions in the public sector have fallen in recent years. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Green Party is warning that a significant reduction in public sector graduate jobs will worsen an “exodus” of young people moving to Australia.

Responses to Written Parliamentary Questions (WPQs) from Green MP Francisco Hernandez show that graduate positions have dropped by 66% in the past two years.

In the year to November 2025 year there were just 192.5 roles, down from 485.5 graduate roles in the year to November 2023.

Hernandez, the Green Party’s public service and tertiary education spokesman, told Newstalk ZB the drop was “hugely concerning”.

He feared it would degrade the long-term workforce capacity of the public sector as the graduate pipeline was a “key way” to build, attract, and retain talent.

Victoria University students’ association president Aidan Donoghue said many students were worried about finding work and the job market had become “dire”.

He said the graduate-specific roles that were being cut were usually taken up by law and humanities students and “students are competing with people that have three, or five, or 10 years’ experience”.

Public Service Commission said the figures did not tell the full story, as graduates also enter the workforce through permanent jobs.

“While some individual graduate and intern programmes have been paused over the past two years, the public service continues to offer high‑quality opportunities for people early in their careers."

The commission said it published a list of current graduate and intern positions on its website, including some established as recently as 2025, and the public service was always looking at ways to attract young talent.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) had the most significant reduction in graduate-specific roles, followed by the Department of Internal Affairs, housing agency Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Ethnic Communities.

The Reserve Bank, Treasury and the Financial Markets Authority had seen a modest increase in graduate positions.

The Green Party said it wants to reverse the Government’s public sector cuts.

“Agencies have literally been directed to make cuts. The first area where cuts are going to fall are naturally the graduate-level roles,” Hernandez said.

“Just by reversing the public sector cuts, which the Greens have already committed to in our Green Budget, we’ll see these graduate roles come back again.”

Some agencies were excluded from figures, as data was not able to be compared across the years.

Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament’s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.