Since February, university student Isabel Paul has applied for more than 60 part-time jobs, sat through three interviews and received just one offer – which was withdrawn hours later.
With summer approaching and student loan payments ending, the 19-year-old animation student is now scrambling to find full-time work to cover rent for her Wellington flat and save for next year’s studies. Based on her experience so far, she’s not optimistic.
“Every single person I know got their job through knowing someone who worked there, or being friends with a manager, or, like, their parents knowing someone,” she says. “But I don’t know people here, because I didn’t grow up here.”
The income has become necessary this year after moving out of an eight-person flat where she paid just $100 a week, into one with just two other people.
“I used to have a really good savings account, but here my rent is $260 a week, and the student loan is $316 and that’s all I’ve got. So it’s 56 bucks a week to live on,” she says. “When a bill comes around, I’m kind of screwed.”
Paul’s experience reflects a broader cultural shift: the summer job that was once a near-guaranteed part of teenage life is increasingly hard to come by. Young adults looking for work over the coming months are entering the toughest job market in recent years, with adults now vying for entry-level work.
Foodstuffs South Island says applications for summer and part-time jobs have risen 117 percent year-on-year with 54,723 applications received in the year to August 2025. McDonald’s, which employs 11,000 New Zealanders, says staff are staying longer, meaning fewer openings.
Working over term breaks offers more than just pocket money. It offers real-world experience and a chance to form the habits needed for a successful career.
Many students will work through term times too, though full-time employment over university or school-free periods has the benefit of not distracting from studies.
The other obvious benefit – income – has grown weightier with cost-of-living pressures and for many students has turned employment from a want into a need.
Student Job Search chief executive Louise Saviker says listings are up 16 percent year-on-year, but applications have climbed 28 percent. Stats NZ data shows 16.4 percent of 15-24 year olds are unemployed nationwide, up from 14.45 last year.
Students face a “really tough” market, Saviker says, with intense competition, economic uncertainty and fewer public-sector graduate roles.
“Together, these shifts have made it harder for students and recent graduates to secure full-time roles post study,” she says.
Big employers across the motu are seeing the impact of these trends in practice.
McDonald’s spokesperson Simon Kenny says there has been a significant increase in people applying for roles at the fast food chain, both part- and full-time over the past few years. At the same time the turnover rate for roles has dropped “significantly”, meaning fewer jobs are available.
“Currently our franchisees employ around 11,000 people across our 173 restaurants. As it stands, we have around 10,000 job applicants in our McHire platform. Generally, we see some of our part-time staff come and go around school and university years, and competition for those roles is strong at the moment across all restaurants.”
Speaking to how application numbers compare with previous years, Kenny says it was only two years ago that McDonald’s ran a national hiring day, to attract people into open roles.
Wellington student Isabel Paul says she’ll be devastated if she can’t afford to stay in her flat through her next year of studies. Photo: Supplied
Isabel Paul has widened her jobseeker net and is looking for anything within a 40-minute drive from her Wellington home. Her push to secure work is to not only improve her financial security now, but to save for her future and gain professional and people skills.
If she doesn’t find work, she’ll apply for the Jobseeker Support Student Hardship benefit.
Paul’s struggles come as the Government faces backlash for cutting Jobseeker eligibility for 18- and 19-year-olds whose parents earn more than the combined pre-tax threshold of $65,529 – a move expected to save the Government $39 million a year.
Further up the country from Paul in Auckland, Sid and Chand Sahrawat of Cassia and The French Café are gearing up to bump up their team numbers by 25 percent for the busy summer period. Over these months the restaurant bookings calendars begin filling up with Christmas events, corporate bookings and weddings.
Jobs are advertised in the first instance on an Auckland hospitality jobs Facebook page and Chand says an ad typically receives 50 to 60 applications, “a lot more” than in years gone by.
Sid and Chand have employed their daughter Zoya since she was 12 and stepped in to aid a staffing shortage during the pandemic.
“As a dad, I’ve never pushed her to work in the family business. But I believe it’s so important to give the next generation opportunities to engage in what we do,” Sid wrote on Father’s Day, posting a photo of himself and his daughter at The French Cafe.
“It helps them connect with others in the real world, beyond text messages and emails, and teaches the value of teamwork and responsibility.”
Sid and Zoya Sahrawat at The French Cafe, where they worked a shift together on Father’s Day. Photo: Supplied
Chand says the couple’s restaurants are open to all applicants but that they often look at hiring staff’s children to boost summer staffing and help their own community.
She tells Newsroom she and Sid pay Zoya the youth wage, making her the cheapest member of the team. She describes this as “conscious anti-nepotism”, pointing out she is only 14 so the $18.80 starting out wage is likely what Zoya would get paid elsewhere.
“She’s saving up for her own car when she’s 16. That’s her goal. We’ve told her we will match whatever she saves,” Chand says.
Despite the uptick in interest, Chand says it’s been years since anyone walked into either of the couple’s restaurants with a hard copy CV to ask about available work. She doesn’t know why this has stopped and says it shows initiative.
“I think when you’re applying for a job which is face to face, customer facing, which often the starting jobs are, it makes a world of difference.”
Sarah and Phillip Blackburn are two more employers that believe “attitude is everything”. The owner-operators of the soon-to-open PAK’nSAVE Rolleston have hired 270 team members ahead of the store opening; they received more than 3000 applications from people including former farmers and office workers and conducted more than 700 interviews.
Sarah Blackburn says: “Given the huge volume of applications we received, we wanted to do what we could to support as many people as possible to get a role or even an interview.
“We’ve heard from a number of people that they apply for jobs and they just don’t hear anything back.”
Pak’nSave owner Foodstuffs says both its North Island and South Island co-ops have seen a marked increase in the number of job applications since before the pandemic, particularly for entry-level roles such as checkout operators.
Both its North Island and South Island co-ops offer career pathways with practical training and career progression. Some grocers partner with local schools and help students with CV writing.
Luc MacKay, University of Canterbury Students’ Association president, says the shift in ratio between jobs and jobseekers is a real issue for students. In many cases student loans don’t cover their entire cost of living, which can be difficult for young adults fending for themselves for the first time.
“We hear it directly from students who come to us and say: Hey, it’s been really difficult over this year. We haven’t been able to find casual jobs’.
The situation is even more fraught for students looking for specific types of work to make up hours of internships or work placements needed to secure either degree. Engineering students need 800 hours of work experience to graduate, which generally equates to two full summer internships.
“For them, it’s been a real pressure point just to get their degree in the first place. It’s pushing a lot of students to take positions they wouldn’t normally consider … for example, they might be taking unpaid internships when they need the money over summer to be able to afford university throughout the year.
MacKay says there’s “only so much” the student association can do to support students, with a great deal of the situation simply a flow-on effect of the weak economy.
“For us, it’s about supporting the students that we have here to ensure that they know where to go and how to get help.”