Where are the public sector jobs in Wellington?

Friday, 2 August 2024

As job cuts continue to climb, the employment opportunities in central Wellington are few and far between.

Last month, Kāinga Ora proposed a reduction of 159 positions and offered voluntary redundancies, while GNS Science, a government research department responsible for monitoring natural hazards, earlier this week told staff that one in five of them could be laid off.

In the capital, many agencies going through restructures are either required, or have chosen, to look internally first for new hires, rather than hiring externally.

However, there are is still a smattering of government jobs going.

On Seek, in Wellington central under ‘Government and Defence’, there were 125 jobs advertised on Thursday.

Shane Jones has a job going in his office to provide advisory, media and administrative support. The pay is between $83,600 - $89,200.

Of the jobs available, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has a job going in his office to provide advisory, media and administrative support. The pay is between $83,600 - $89,200.

National MP Carl Bates is after a part-time “experienced and enthusiastic senior executive assistant to join his team”.

Wellington is experiencing the effects of government public service cuts, with 5,700 full-time jobs lost and several projects halted. The coalition aims to reduce the public sector to 2017 levels.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis was looking for an MP support adviser for “community engagement and constituent services”.

Ministry for Primary Industries was looking for a ‘forest service’ adviser, that would be paid between $74,964 to $99,968, while the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was looking for a senior policy adviser, paying $110,098 to $138,028, or a policy adviser between $75,000 to $94,000.

The Department of Conservation had 49 jobs overall advertised across the country and 16 government jobs specifically in Wellington.

One is for a principal policy adviser, with the salary range from $112,469 to $150,996. Another is for a science adviser to lead wild animal research.

Internal Affairs has a job that’s a product lead, “for the delivery of high-quality products and services that will drive continuous improvement across our system to improve both staff and customer user experiences”. The pay is $117,742 to $157,843.

National SEEK job ad percentage change by region (June 2024 vs May 2024).

There is a role for six to nine months as a policy analyst working on the Government's response to the Abuse in Care inquiry.

The Reserve Bank had eight jobs in Wellington - working in areas such as market analysis, forecasting and thematics.

Seek’s June 2024 employment report saw an 8% decrease in job ads compared with May - and it was down 35% compared with the same time last year.

Regionally, Wellington had one of the worst falls in job ads compared with June 2023 - down 46% - only trumped by Marlborough which fell 50%. Compared with May, Wellington was down 9%, while across New Zealand job ads declined 8%.

At the end of June 2024, 196,434 people were receiving the Jobseeker Support benefit. This was up 13.5%, compared with June 2023.

The proportion of the working-age people receiving Jobseeker Support increased 0.8% in Wellington (up to 5.3.%), between June 2023 to June 2024.