A report released late last year from the Digital Skills Forum identified NZ as having a significant and growing digital skills shortage as global demand for such skills balloons at an unprecedented pace.
All NZ’s major trading partners are facing the same issue.
The United Kingdom is estimated to be losing £63 billion a year off its GDP with a shortage of 750,000 information, computer and technology (ICT) workers and 75% of business reported it as a major growth constraint.
The European Union is estimated to be 500,000 short.
The United States has almost half a million software developer jobs open in a sector growing at 17% a year.
Those jobs represent very high paying prospects for graduates, with software engineers earning US$70,000 straight out of university.
In NZ estimates are that the tech sector had 5000 graduates in 2016 but was creating about 14,000 new jobs, driven by not only technology firms, but all other parts of the economy including agriculture also requiring skilled staff.
The skills shortfall has been largely met by employing migrants, with 5500 migrant work visas being released for the sector.
The use of immigration to fill ICT gaps has helped disguise the level of shortage from locally provided workers.
The report authors also caution it might be risky to continue to look to migration as a means of plugging the skills gap with intense global demand putting greater financial drain on the country as it tries to compete.
Agri-software development company Rezare is one of the most established ICT recruiters in the sector.
Managing director Andrew Cooke confirmed his company often ends up employing migrants for software and systems development.
“There is no question that in terms of sourcing graduates out of NZ there are not enough STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students and that absolutely includes the IT area.
“It is difficult to come across a New Zealander in some of these positions when we are looking. But if we as an economy are going to add value in this sector then there is definitely a gap there.”
He acknowledged eight years under National’s relatively benign immigration policy meant it had been relatively easy to fill those gaps with migrant workers.
“There are plenty of skilled migrants there.
“They usually come from lower wage rate economies including Ukraine, India, Bangladesh and more recently Vietnam where they have been doing outsource work, often for very large US companies so their exposure and experience is well ahead of most New Zealanders.”
The downside for a company like Rezare that serviced the rural sector was the migrants’ relatively low level of understanding about NZ pastoral farming systems.
“It would be brilliant if perhaps we could see Massey or Lincoln combining agri papers with ICT papers.
“The work Waikato University agri-business professor Jacqueline Rowarth was trying to do to bring agri and tech together was a good effort to start from.”
Some countries were equipping graduates better with IT skills than others.
In the United States it was not unusual for graduates who had majors in social or psych papers to also do a co-joint degree in ICT.
Pay in the sector in NZ is generally regarded as very good with the base salary for an ICT worker of $82,000 comparing favourably against the national average salary of $50,000 a year.
The report noted efforts by the Government to increase the local supply of skilled graduates, including $28 million invested in 2015 over four years in three ICT graduate schools in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
They aimed to deliver more industry-focused education and research to produce a further 100-200 graduates a year.
