ASB senior economist Mark Smith said: “Employment still looked to be above its maximum sustainable level, but labour market tightness is quickly receding.”
Allen has been offering bonuses of up to $3000 for new employees - “I’ve been doing that for probably two years now. I don’t know [why people aren’t applying for the positions]. I just don’t know,” he said.
“These guys [construction workers] earn really good money. They come to us, they do get paid well and they also learn so much on the job. It’s a fantastic opportunity. Some of these guys could be earning between $75k to $100k plus.
“Our business could be double the size it is at the moment, but we’re just choked by [a lack of] staff. The thing that worries me is that the [construction] work we’re doing is for people who have gone through absolute hell with Cyclone Gabrielle and flooding.”
Allen said in the 25 years he has been running his current business, and the roughly 30 years he’s worked in construction he had never seen an employment crunch like this.
“We’ve got about 40 staff [members] at the moment, and they are prepared to do this hard work.
“But a lot of the young ones just, I don’t know, just don’t want to do that work.”
Allen believed there were easier options for work people were chasing and doubted official unemployment figures.
“What we’re hearing in the media that unemployment is low, I don’t believe it is because of the amount of people I know that are on Winz [Work and Income benefits] doing these upskilling courses that the Government are shouting them.
“We’ve had guys from the South Island who are getting a $5000 payment to relocate to Auckland. Part of that deal is they’ve got a signed contract with us - and then they never turn up. I don’t know where they go. They take the money and probably go to Australia.
“Then we’ve got nothing but hard-working foreigners who are really showing the Kiwis up.”
Still, Allen said, he struggled to employ foreign nationals because of their visa conditions.
“This emergency visa - the advice all these migrants got told was. ‘don’t go down that route because you will shoot yourself in the foot beyond that six months it was granted for’.
“They [migrants] don’t want to go down that route because it’s sort of the better option for them to come under as skilled workers, so an employer accredited visa, which is what we’ve got.”
He said some employers were “ripping these migrants off and not looking after them” which had made the process of employing them difficult for other companies.
“We’re very fortunate for the staff that we’ve got and we look after them because, you know, we know they’re not easy to replace.
“The whole industry, construction, seems to struggling to get staff,” he said.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to be the person that put Kiwis out of a job, but they aren’t here or they don’t want the work.”
Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.
