$50 An Hour, 12% Superannuation: Australian Recruiters Target Jobseekers

Susan
Edmunds, Money Correspondent

Journalist
Ged Cann says he started thinking about moving overseas out
of concern over whether he would ever be able to build the
kind of life he wanted in New Zealand.

“When it became
clear the newly-elected National-led government was going to
hand tax breaks back to property investors I decided the
prospects for my generation affording a home and having a
good life in New Zealand were limited.

“It was a
choice between staying in a low-wage, high-cost-of-living
country where half of my wage would go on mortgage
repayments, or moving to a high-wage country with lower cost
of living and more career options.”

He said he spoke
to recruiters who said house prices and the high cost of
living meant they struggled to attract and retain
international talent, “hamstringing the likes of the tech
and the international education sector”.

He initially
applied for a job that would have been based in South East
Asia but after he interviewed for the role he was offered a
job in Melbourne, with support for the move.

“There
are a lot more opportunities, and wages really are markedly
higher. Adjusting for the exchange rate, my wage increased
31 percent after moving to Melbourne.

“I find the
workforce are also more dynamic. I remember the day I
arrived on the 6am flight out of Christchurch I sat in a
café and found myself accidentally eavesdropping, and I was
staggered at the number of young people coming and going,
discussing business ideas, or new products, or start-ups
they were involved in.”

He said the perks were better,
too.

“Unions here are stronger, which
means overtime payments and things like higher rates on
weekends are enforced as a matter of course. The minimum
superannuation contribution is also much higher here – 12
percent of earnings, compared to 3 percent for KiwiSaver.
The difference that makes is massive, and you visibly see
your retirement savings grow every fortnight.”

He is
one of many New Zealanders who have made the leap for better
work opportunities in Australia.

In the year to March
2025, the most recent for which data is available, 47,734
migrants left New Zealand for Australia, of whom 86 percent
were New Zealand citizens.

Accounting for people
moving the other way, the net loss was just under
30,000.

New Zealand’s annual net loss averaged about
30,000 a year during 2004 to 2013, and 3000 a year during
2014 to 2019, Stats NZ said.

Australian recruiters are
working hard to appeal to New Zealand job hunters, as this
country’s labour market continues to struggle.

There
are ads on Trade Me from Australian firms wanting to hire
New Zealanders including air conditioning technicians on $45
to $55 an hour with assistance with relocation and a sign-on
bonus, carpenters, land development surveyors, technicians,
civil engineers and roofers.

“The number of job
listings that contain the key words of ‘Australia’ or some
combination of ‘move/relocate to Australia’ is small,
accounting for about 0.05 percent of all listings annually.
While we’ve seen the total number of these listings
gradually increase over the last five years, there’s not
enough data to draw meaningful conclusions from,” a
spokesperson said.

Seek’s New Zealand site offers the
option of searching for roles in Australia, and there are
almost 18,000 available.

A recent Seek posting that
was emailed to New Zealand jobhunters asked teachers to
relocate to Victoria from New Zealand and earn up to
A$118,063 a year plus 12 percent superannuation.

Seek
said the number of New Zealand applications for Australian
roles was higher now than before Covid. Just over 1 percent
of all applicants for Australian jobs are in New
Zealand.

About a quarter of New Zealanders were
applying for jobs in Queensland. That was followed by
Victoria at 22.5 percent.

Just over 11 percent were
applying for trades and services roles.

Kiwibank chief
economist Jarrod Kerr said he had recently been at a
building industry conference where participants told him
they expected many of the people featured as “apprentices of
the year” would go to Australia once they finished their
training.

“That’s just one example, there have been
others telling me that… accountants, lawyers… it’s
frustrating for them to train them up and they
leave.”

Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold said the
Australian labour market was a lot stronger than New
Zealand’s and had been for some time.

That was helping
to drive stronger population growth there, too.

“We
tend to find with net migration is that it is inversely
correlated with the unemployment rate
differential.

“So with our unemployment rate now at
5.3 percent versus the 4.3 percent there, that reflects a
sizeable difference in terms of labour market demand and
conditions. Usually our unemployment rate would be a bit
lower than Australia’s.”

He said the situation was
likely to continue for at least the next six
months.

“Our forecast for the unemployment rate
suggests another increase in the unemployment rate in the
fourth quarter, which is where we’re sitting now in reality.
So 5.4 percent. And my colleagues in Australia have got much
lower unemployment rate forecasts, peaking at around about
4.5 percent there and thereabouts.”

It should start to
narrow towards the middle of next year, he
said.

“That’s when we are expecting to see much
stronger employment growth.”

People were being paid
more in Australia, he said.

“The per capita income
level in Australia is stronger than here. So on average,
that would be the case. Quite difficult, I think, to make
direct comparisons.

“The tax and superannuation
differences are significant between New Zealand and
Australia. So you have to sort of look a little bit beyond
the actual wage rate or the monthly pay, I think. That’s
true… also, you have to remember that, you know, the cost
of living is also higher in Australia, particularly if you
want to buy a house.

“If you were going to move from,
say, Auckland to Sydney, for example, you would have to
price in a noticeably higher cost for accommodation. And
certainly, if you expected to buy a house, you would
probably find that you would need to trade down relative to
what you think you could afford in New Zealand.
“

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