would cease to exist<\/a>. Otago University\u2019s Department of Science Communication was once home to my generation\u2019s future David Attenboroughs and Suzy Catos. In 2023, however, the university made national headlines when it announced a $60 million deficit. Ripples of shock rolled across campus as the big wigs of the university slowly revealed who and what would be on the chopping block: lecturers we\u2019d looked up to and courses some had travelled across the world for. When the letter spelling the fate of our department landed in our inboxes, my peers and I dropped everything for a sombre lunchtime beer.<\/p>\nMany of my classmates saw out the end of their two-year master\u2019s degrees and other uni mates flew the nest. I left with a postgraduate diploma in science communication and side-stepped into student media. During my studies I\u2019d been working part-time at student mag Critic Te \u0100rohi, and I took the reins as its full-time editor in 2024 and again in 2025, after heeding the advice of my former editor, who told me, \u201cHold onto your job\u201d.<\/p>\n
But student media is, by definition, temporary. As I swapped Scrumpy cider for red wine (in a glass!) and found myself asking younger staff members what certain slang in their articles meant, I knew I was edging closer to the end of my tenure.<\/p>\n
The dread that had been planted with those first rounds of course cuts rooted further with each new story of disillusionment I heard from friends working outside the university\u2019s walls, and each article I wrote on the mood of students who were watching their future professions thin out. Jokes about becoming overqualified baristas were commonplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s cooked,\u201d one of my friends, who we\u2019ll call Sophie, says to me over a video call, as she applies her mascara while getting ready for work \u2013 it\u2019s the only time she\u2019ll get today to talk. Like many of my mates who were first employed in the tail-end of the post-Covid boom, she\u2019s working for an understaffed company which can\u2019t afford to employ more people, and she\u2019s shouldering multiple roles\u2019 worth of work.<\/p>\n
Sophie snagged a job in a big company in 2024, one of the 100 or so graduates the business hired that year. Then it started to struggle. The company slashed half its staff in Sophie\u2019s first year, creating a \u201chorrible\u201d work environment. Grads were worried they\u2019d be next, but rather than cutting their jobs, the company instead withdrew everything that \u201cmade the job good\u201d. Pay rises, benefits, social events \u2013 all gone.<\/p>\n
Fewer and fewer graduates have been brought through the door. The 30 who were originally promised a job for 2024 were told a couple of months before starting that they no longer had positions in the company. Only those who\u2019d previously been interns were hired. It\u2019s this type of hiring process that\u2019s behind what jobseekers have dubbed \u201cghost jobs\u201d. A job is advertised on websites like Seek but they\u2019re quickly filled internally or through referral.<\/p>\n
Sophie\u2019s been hit up by around five uni students on LinkedIn who have clocked the change and want to personally connect for a leg-up. \u201cRespect, to be honest, no shade to them cos it\u2019s super rough,\u201d she says. More than ever, it seems, it really is who you know.<\/p>\n
My friend Madeline graduated with a masters in science communication and reckoned a job would fall right into her lap. The job market\u2019s cold reception was a shock: rejection, ghosting and tumbleweeds on Seek. A few months into unemployment, she sunk into a depression that made her \u201cswallow her pride\u201d and apply for an entry-level job that paid less than the living wage. She reckons the best use of her masters so far was that it set her apart from the many other applicants for the basic role.<\/p>\n
Madeline was grateful to be employed, but she suffered a crisis of identity in a job that didn\u2019t fit the imagined idea of her future. For years, her sense of self had been wrapped in the pursuit of that coveted degree. When inevitably asked what she was studying during flat-party small talk, she was used to proudly replying \u201cmaster\u2019s in science communication\u201d. In her new job, she found herself repeatedly referring to her former degree and aspirations for her career after her current role. \u201cYou feel embarrassed about not having a job, or the job you have doesn\u2019t meet the expectation of what you thought you would be doing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The only thing stopping Madeline from moving to Australia is the money \u2013 she can\u2019t afford a plane ticket and a month\u2019s worth of rent in advance.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\")
Melbourne\u2019s Town Hall Station, part of the brand new Melbourne Metro Tunnel rail network. (Photo: Jesse Thompson\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Two of my other friends joined the Aussie bandwagon last year though \u2013 Charlotte and \u2018Chaddy\u2019. Chaddy says he was expecting entering the job market would be tough, but he was still taken aback by just how hard it was. He had to extend his job search beyond his hometown of Tauranga to Auckland. Even then, any job remotely in the realm of his skillset required three-to-five years of experience. \u201cAs a young professional in your early to mid-20s, it\u2019s so fucking hard to get a job that doesn\u2019t require previous experience. It was also disheartening, I found, to apply for something, scroll down and you\u2019d see like 300-plus other applicants. Like, fucking hell, there\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to get this.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cycled between the welfare system, freelancing stints and short-term contracts for two years, before \u201clanding in a load of luck\u201d with a job in Aussie.<\/p>\n
Word from across the ditch? It\u2019s all it\u2019s cracked up to be. \u201cThoroughly recommend,\u201d says Charlotte, a former classmate. \u201cI don\u2019t even think I considered staying in New Zealand after finishing my masters [in science communication] because I knew I wasn\u2019t going to be able to get anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She hasn\u2019t found a career job in Melbourne (she jokes that the influx of New Zealanders has made it competitive), but marvels that she\u2019s paid NZ$38 an hour at her 20-hour-a-week barista job. That\u2019s an entire block of Kiwi butter an hour more than most NZ baristas and it allows her to live comfortably. She still has spare time to put into applying for jobs that will make the most of her qualifications.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work life balance \u2013 just because of how much you get paid here \u2013 it\u2019s possible to search for a job that you want to do as a career whilst doing hospo or retail and still have a good time doing it and not be stressed about money. And I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case in New Zealand,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The government has told my generation we can afford a house if we live off tuna and stir fried veg and stop gaming and get off the couch. It\u2019s told us there are economic green shoots. We\u2019ve lived a different reality and we\u2019re not buying the promises. We\u2019re a generation who have been taught to set boundaries, and we\u2019re doing just that \u2013 with the Tasman Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I believed in the social contract: study, work hard, get ahead, build a life. Now I realise that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[85,85322,492,156,111,146622,139,69,2935],"class_list":["post-253008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-australia","tag-brain-drain","tag-comments-enabled","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand-emigrants","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253008","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=253008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}