{"id":128918,"date":"2025-11-11T03:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T03:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/128918\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T03:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T03:33:11","slug":"gen-z-job-crunch-record-numbers-of-applicants-as-unemployment-increases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/128918\/","title":{"rendered":"Gen Z job crunch: Record numbers of applicants as unemployment increases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was applying to at least 10 [jobs] a day for the first couple of weeks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done everything right \u2013 studied, interned, networked \u2013 but full-time jobs are almost impossible to get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hayley, who recently landed a permanent role, said most employers don\u2019t even reply to job applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite defeating and a little bit frustrating. Especially when you\u2019re spending most of your days crafting these letters to apply for jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hayley said the lack of jobs had been frustrating for her and her peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that a lot of my peers as well want these jobs, so the competition just keeps growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many of my friends want to move overseas but cannot afford to or have taken jobs outside their field just to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, the Herald reported a minimum-wage Christmas casual role for a sales assistant at Welly-Putt in Wellington had attracted more than 600 applicants<\/a> in just over three weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s very indicative of the sorts of things we\u2019re seeing,\u201d Webster said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely seeing people taking multiple casual or part-time jobs \u2026 a lot of treading water and stop-gap measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, Stats NZ said annual unemployment for the September quarter hit 5.3%<\/a>, the highest it has been since December 2016.<\/p>\n

Younger age groups were among the hardest hit by labour market conditions, with the unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds increasing from 13.1% to 15.2% in the year to the September 2025 quarter. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the number of underutilised people was 406,000, up 10.6% compared with last year.<\/p>\n

Webster said they were not seeing the same lift in businesses hiring for full-time roles as they were for casual positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does give us a bit of hope that the increase in casual employees employed is at least an indicator that businesses are seeing increased demand and are needing more people.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully if businesses get a bit more confident, then they\u2019ll be more willing to take on full-timers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cameron Smith is an Auckland-based business reporter. He joined the Herald in 2015 and has covered business and sports. He reports on topics such as retail, small business, the workplace and macroeconomics.<\/p>\n

Listen and subscribe to the Today in Business<\/a> podcast \u2013 the top headlines from the NZ Herald business team summarised and delivered by an AI voice as an easily digestible recap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was applying to at least 10 [jobs] a day for the first couple of weeks,\u201d she said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[31951,806,682,138,16426,36191,33404,9828,219,1122,1601,1866,71,16638,1333,21325,3112,89295,16427,6722,111,139,3591,69,1118,15225,415,6045,3240,1974,312,4062,241,11226,303,14605],"class_list":["post-128918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-applicants","tag-as","tag-being","tag-business","tag-christopher","tag-couch","tag-crunch","tag-different","tag-economy","tag-employment","tag-expert","tag-find","tag-from","tag-gen","tag-get","tag-increases","tag-job","tag-leavers","tag-luxon","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-numbers","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-presented","tag-prime","tag-reality","tag-recently","tag-record","tag-says","tag-school","tag-unemployment","tag-urged","tag-very","tag-whats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}