Every other day, it seems, there’s news of more job cuts or business closures, kicking off in 2023 with a swathe of redundancies in the public sector. News outlets have tried to pull together accurate figures of public service redundancies – estimating close to 10,000 – but the government says actual figures were much lower. And there are no estimates ‒ disputed or otherwise ‒ of jobs lost in the private sector.
However, there are two certainties. First, the impact on a person who loses their job can cut deep; second, the job market they’ve unwittingly found themselves in is tough.
How tough? Seek NZ says job ads fell 2% between April and May, and the year-on-year slide is 8%. While the decline has slowed over the past two years, applications for each job have risen by 2% in the past year and are now at a record high.
Seek NZ’s Rob Clark says the job market is “bumping along the bottom” – not worsening, but also not improving significantly. Anecdotally, employers tell of advertising jobs and having 300 people apply for one position. That’s not surprising given there were 156,000 New Zealanders out of work in March and unemployment has been rising since 2022, up from 3.3% to 5.1%.
Correspondingly, the proportion of the working-aged population still in work has fallen, down to 67.2% early this year, from a high of 69.8% in 2023.
The impact of job losses across New Zealand is also apparent in the number of applications for KiwiSaver funds on hardship grounds. From last July to this month, 44,360 people withdrew money from KiwiSaver for hardship reasons, up from 32,480 in the previous financial year.
Behind these figures are real Kiwis, trying to stitch their lives back together.
Mill closures
When Jude Sinai (Te Arawa: Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Whakaue) moved from his Wellington home to Ohakune in 2005, he and his then partner were expecting their second child and realised on his storeman’s wages they couldn’t afford a garage, let alone a family home. Given his partner had roots in Ruapehu and there were well-paying jobs at the Karioi pulp mill, they headed north. At first, Sinai, 46, was sceptical, but as the years went by – and he got promotions and new opportunities at the mill – he came to love the community where he’s raised four children.
“In a small community like Ruapehu, you end up being a sports coach, joining the school board of trustees, getting involved at the marae and being a bus driver,” says Sinai, a former First Union delegate at Karioi.
Now he plays a different role, one he had hoped not to find himself in. He’s Ngāti Rangi’s Ngā Waihua o Paerangi kaimahi support liaison to around 260 workers, and their whānau, who were made redundant from the Winstone Pulp International Tangiwai sawmill and Karioi pulp mill last October. He’s been in contact with 213 of those workers and seen the whole gamut of responses.
Starting with the first announcement of closures, there was despair, anger and disbelief writ large across the faces of stunned staff who, says Sinai, were accustomed to “boom-and-bust cycles” and talk of downturns, but never expected the mills would cease altogether.
“Shock was probably the predominant emotion because many still hadn’t registered what it would all mean for them ‒ that it was really happening,” he says. “These were places where you had young workers whose grandparents and parents had worked there.”
Tight-knit family
“It was more than a job because you were working 12-hour shifts four days a week and people became like a second family. You spent a lot of time getting to know the ins and outs of everyone’s family, how their kids were doing. You’d spend time in the meal room having those kinds of conversations, usually a bit of marital counselling thrown in. All of a sudden, that’s gone.”
Sinai, the son of a union delegate who watched his father deal with redundancy in the 1980s, worries most about those who become “siloed” and are reluctant to reach out. He tries to keep in touch by regular phone calls, saying it might be a small gesture, but you never know how much a person is relying on that call.
“There are some people who think, ‘I’ve been working since I was 16, 17 and I’ve never needed a handout; I’ve never needed a benefit.’”
Other times, someone might say they’re doing well and everything is fine, but partners tell Sinai a different story. “When that happens, I’ll invite them out for a beer.”
He says a former sawmill manager with a “pastoral heart” took it upon himself to check on six families a day; another has held regular barbecues where families can get together. He likens the situation to working through grief.
In districts such as Ruapehu, widespread but with small populations, the closure of a major employer ripples through the whole community as millions of dollars are sucked out of the local economy. Spending at local stores drops, support businesses lay off staff, and people who hold important jobs in the community move away.
Summer traffic diversions, which closed a section of the Desert Rd and took travellers through towns like Ohakune and National Park (Waimarino), provided a welcome but temporary boon for businesses. While a small number of older workers received healthy redundancy payouts, Sinai says most hadn’t worked at the mills for long enough to qualify for large payments, leaving them wondering how to pay the bills.
“It was the right time of year for seasonal work, and I honestly believe that’s the only reason we didn’t see an instant queue outside the MSD [Ministry of Social Development] office. But seasonal work doesn’t pay as well as working at the mills did and it is, by its very name and nature, not an all-year-round option.”
Housing trap
At about the same time as the closures, Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL) announced that life passes could no longer be used at the Whakapapa or Tūroa ski fields, after the liquidation of the 70-year-old ski fields’ operator. Sinai said that led to more homes going on the market, and property prices slumped.
“There were actually people who had bought a first home the week that the [mill] announcement was made,” he says. “They used their KiwiSaver for a first-home deposit, so they’ve got nothing to fall back on, and because we’ve now got a surplus of homes, they’ve been left with a $500,000 mortgage on a home which has dropped in value. Some people have lost $100,000 in a very short space of time.”
As well as seasonal work and shifts across the Tasman, others have tried working away from home, attempting to secure affordable accommodation before eventually moving their families.
“But rent costs are out of the gate and some just couldn’t do the work away from home because it was too hard to be away from tamariki,” Sinai says. “They ended up trying to pay for accommodation in a new place and paying for accommodation back here as they tried to set themselves up, only for it not to work out and prove to be a big cost exercise. I’ve seen that happen to a few families.”
His support role involves creating outreach programmes and support events, looking at opportunities for retraining, and the more nebulous goal of helping to “build resilience and long-term wellbeing in the community”. There’s talk of the mills being converted into a torrefaction facility, where biomass such as wood is converted into clean-burning pellets used to fuel other industries, and the possibility of tourism initiatives and solar farming.
Sinai says there are opportunities for future growth, but he would like to see the government be more proactive in encouraging such developments.
“This government’s priority is growth and work, so they’re looking for any good news they can find in terms of the number of people in jobs, but they don’t seem to want to hear about what’s happening in the meantime. They don’t seem particularly interested in hearing about how Tom, Dick and Harry are losing their wits; I don’t think they’re particularly interested in the holistic health of people.”
How is Sinai taking care of his own mental health and family finances? He might have paid off his mortgage, but the lights need to be kept on and food put on the table. While this role has given him a temporary reprieve, he’s uncertain what the future will bring. His Christian faith helps, as does having a network of friends and family.
“I got really heavy there for a while because I want to see tangible good things happen to and for the families. I came to realise really quickly that you can only provide options as best you can and not everyone is going to take advantage of those.
“You need to stay proactive, to try to plan, to focus on retraining. This is an amazing part of the country and there are opportunities here, so I really hope to see some development – economic, social and cultural – that lifts people up.”
Breaking the news
Greg Hughes knew it was coming. Hughes, 53, had worked in television for long enough – including 16 years at TVNZ – to know the telltale signs of an impending “business redesign”, but his position as a senior creative director had always been secure. That was until last September, when the state-owned broadcaster announced more job cuts to help make $30 million in savings by the end of the 2026 financial year.
In all, TVNZ cut 48.5 full-time jobs last year. One of them was Hughes’s: conceiving, crafting and editing promotional campaigns for shows and brands.
“You start to see people disappearing off into meeting rooms and blinds being pulled,” says Hughes. “My manager, who I have the deepest respect for, was good enough to give me a heads-up.”
In a humorous but honest and heartfelt LinkedIn post, Hughes acknowledged he’d previously been on the other side of the meeting room table, breaking the news to staff that their services were no longer needed.
“Take a seat, you’re told, from a manager who never wanted to have these conversations but has to because of their position. Having been on the right side of restructures, I know what this feels like. It’s awful. Delivering messages the business wants you to deliver but you have no interest in doing so. But you’re paid to, not trained to, though. That’s why you’re on the big bucks,” he wrote.
“I was under no illusion that one day I would be on the other side of the table, but after the initial team meeting, I remember feeling quite numb.”
In all, he says, it took two to three months to go through the process, and he was treated with kindness, respect and dignity. His last day was four days before Christmas and in many respects, summer felt like any other.
News media tends to go quiet during late December and early January so he enjoyed the time with family, including his 22-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, and friends. Hughes started looking for work in mid-January. He’s still looking.
While Hughes received nearly a year’s salary (44 weeks minus tax), he’s watching that slowly drain away. Now separated from his partner, he’s avoided the temptation to splash out, has kept paying himself a fortnightly wage and maintained mortgage repayments.
Recently, he talked to the bank about a mortgage holiday but was horrified at the rate of interest he would incur. He’s still contemplating switching to interest-only repayments. Payments into his superannuation account have stalled, as they have for many others.
He talks of spending hundreds of dollars on vet bills for the family dog, Charlie the Cavoodle, aged 12, followed by his daughter having a minor car accident.
“It doesn’t take much to tip everything over the edge.”
Hughes is keeping in touch with former colleagues and has a network of friends who have been nothing but supportive – “one calls every Friday to check in and chat” – and he’s trying to stay positive. Still, he says he’s lucky. He’s heard of other families where both breadwinners have lost their jobs around the same time.
“There was shock, but also acceptance because, hey, I’d had a good run.”
But now in his early 50s, still loving the industry where he started in his 20s, Hughes would like to run a little longer. He’s gone out on his own, using some of his redundancy money to set up and equip Pogo Creative.
That’s led to work with the likes of former radio DJs Dom Harvey and Jay-Jay Feeney at their PodLab business, as well as with a Northland banana plantation and some real estate videography and photography. It’s not enough but it’s a start, and is supplemented by odd jobs, such as gardening and water blasting.
When he was still employed, he says, “There were days when I’d be walking to work and I was stressed about something, then I’d see the tour buses outside SkyCity and think, ‘It’d be nice to be a driver taking tourists around the country,’ so I’ve actually investigated getting a passenger licence.”
One friend is re-registering to return to teaching; another has returned to study for a different role. Hughes acknowledges he would look at going to Australia for work, but how stable that might be is unknown.
He’s concerned by assumptions that any work involving social media must be done by 25-year-olds. “I know a lot of that social media stuff because I’ve done it, I was there at the beginning,” he says. “There’s also the idea that you’ll want a certain salary, but I’m not really even worried about money at this stage because I just want to work.”
Unemployed & over 50
In 2022, Carol Wyatt (not her real name) and her husband, James, began developing plans for their long-held retirement goal of moving from Wellington to a Northland lifestyle block. A consultant in the health sector for two decades, Wyatt, then in her mid-50s, was confident work would continue to come her way.
They put their eastern suburbs home on the market, settled on the Northland property and made the shift. Initially, all went well and the couple’s work travelled with them.
Wyatt had established her own business after 10 years in senior advisory roles, working with community groups, central and local government agencies, and private businesses designing and evaluating social change work.
But by 2023, in the weeks leading up to the election, Wyatt noticed work was markedly slower than usual. She says uncertainty around election time can contribute to changes in the pace of work, but even after the results were known and the coalition agreement signed, it failed to pick up. So concerned was Wyatt that she took on a one-year contract; six months later, she was made redundant.
Since last September, Wyatt has completed just two small pieces of work for not-for-profit organisations.
“The other problem for us was that when we left Wellington, it was right at the peak of the property market boom and we couldn’t actually sell the house,” she says. “That left us in a tricky position because the plan had been to sell, shift north and be mortgage free. That didn’t happen and we’d bought already. We thought, ‘We’ll hang on’, but we got zero offers which was, at the time, unheard of.”
Since then, capital values across Wellington suburbs have dropped between 12.1% and 29.3%. “We’re lucky because we’ve got good tenants – and we had a house to begin with – so we thought, ‘We’re just going to try and ride this out as the property market improves,’ but, of course, that hasn’t happened and there are so many people out of work in Wellington.”
There have been “can we afford the mortgage?” moments, and James now works in construction, having started off labouring and moved into management. If it weren’t for that, Wyatt says, they would struggle to remain in Northland.
There have been big job losses that seemed entirely numbers based. You know, ‘We’ll cut this entire group of people.
Nevertheless, she’s trying to find the positives. Being out of work allowed her to spend more time with her elderly father before his death, and the fact that James, who worked in project management, could find work was lucky, she says. She’s joined a handful of groups and enjoyed getting to know people in her community. Now 58, Wyatt says she has a few more years to go before she officially retires and she would like to be working and contributing. “I didn’t consider I would stop working any time soon. I thought I would work for another 10 years or so – as long as I could – because I enjoyed my work.
“The thing that I’ve found difficult to accept, particularly seeing colleagues in Wellington who have lost their jobs, is that in terms of the public service, there doesn’t seem to be a strategy from the government about moving forward.
“There have been big job losses that seemed to be entirely numbers based. You know, ‘We’ll cut this entire group of people,’ followed by the realisation that they can’t because those people do core functions. There’s still work to be done and at some point that work is going to have to be done, but by whom?”
Round three
Tui Rutherford was head of small business services at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment when he was made redundant in January. But he took it in his stride; after all, the 53-year-old had gone through redundancy twice already.
“I’m old enough to be aware that I’m not indispensable, but my other two experiences of it were stepping into a market that was still bubbling along with good opportunities,” he says.
“In one case, I was able to set up my own business and in another, I stepped straight into another job. Whereas with this one, particularly in Wellington, it felt like it was impacting everybody and the job market seemed to go stone dead.”
Like Sinai, Hughes and Wyatt, Rutherford describes himself as lucky. For starters, he wasn’t in a household where both partners had lost their jobs, although there was a period when that looked possible. Rutherford describes it as a time of high anxiety.
Still, any discretionary spending, even minor expenses, is discussed more thoroughly than they once were.
“We’ve got enough of a backstop to not worry as much as many others, but that doesn’t last forever and it comes at the cost of personal equity. As time goes by, we’re increasingly trimming costs.”
He and his wife’s four adult sons are making their own way in the world, but Rutherford says he’s conscious that on a single income, the couple don’t have the “insurance policy” for the kids that they might have had.
There are other differences this time round, too. Rutherford is now older, and while as a younger person he did career resets, he no longer feels there’s as much room – or time – to step sideways and possibly backwards.
While he’s 12 years away from official retirement age, he’s conscious it’s looming.
“This is the first time I’ve gone through the process while actively thinking about how many years I’ve got left. I am starting to think about what retirement might look like and you don’t want to be in the situation of having to eat into savings for the future. That feels too precarious.”
Rutherford is well aware that’s the reality, or worse, for many New Zealanders, so he’s thinking carefully about his skills and experience and how they can be used in future roles. That work could well focus on helping others, and he’s spent some time considering next moves.
He chairs the Featherston Community Board, is a board member for Business Wairarapa, interim chair of the Featherston Engine Business Association, and a board member of the Small Enterprise Association of Australia and New Zealand.
Rutherford says he’s also made a conscious effort to set aside time for reflection and revitalisation.
“I was working 50, 60 hours a week and I’d start each day with a plan but by 9am most mornings that plan would be out the window. It’s nice to make a plan for the week and then follow that plan. I have enjoyed not being pulled in so many directions, but that does come at a cost and I’m now past ‘peak relaxed’ and ready to get back into the regular workforce.”
While next moves are uncertain, Rutherford is not hiding the fact he was made redundant. It’s happening so often now, he says, there’s not as much stigma attached to it as previously.
“It’s just part of the modern working environment.”