ANZ Skills Shortage 2026: The Industries Struggling Most to Hire

Trades and construction, healthcare, technology and early childhood education are the hardest industries to hire for in Australia and New Zealand in 2026. Jobs and Skills Australia found 293 of 1,022 occupations in national shortage, and New Zealand's Green List carries more than 50 unfilled healthcare roles alone. Pear Tree places offshore talent directly into the administrative, coordination and technical roles behind these shortages, within 1 to 2 weeks, at 50 to 80% below local cost.

Which industries in Australia and New Zealand are struggling most to hire in 2026?

Four industries account for most of the pain: trades and construction, healthcare and community services, technology, and early childhood education. Jobs and Skills Australia's Occupation Shortage Report for March 2026 put 293 of 1,022 assessed occupations, 29% of the total, in national shortage, down slightly from 33% in 2024 but still historically high. The national vacancy fill rate sits at 68.2%, and trades and construction roles fill at just 55.1%, the lowest of any sector.

New Zealand's picture is similar in shape, if smaller in scale. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's Green List, the clearest signal of where New Zealand cannot find enough local talent, carries more than 50 healthcare roles alone, from general practitioners and registered nurses to psychiatrists and speech language therapists. Construction, education and ICT occupations round out the list.

How severe is Australia's skills shortage in 2026?

Severe, and still worsening for most employers. Hays' most recent salary survey of 6,903 organisations found 88% of Australian businesses are experiencing skills shortages, and 40% say the impact has intensified over the past 12 months. 78% expect the shortage to affect their operations or growth, and 77% blame a lack of qualified or experienced candidates rather than a lack of applicants generally.

Accountancy and finance, construction and property, and engineering are the three functions Hays flags as under the most pressure. In response, 75% of employers have raised salaries beyond what they had planned, 62% are upskilling existing staff, and 37% are now sponsoring or hiring overseas candidates, up sharply from just 7% previously. That last figure is worth sitting with: overseas hiring has gone from a fringe tactic to a mainstream response inside two years.

Which roles are hardest to fill in New Zealand right now?

Skilled trades, first. Nearly one in five New Zealand construction workers is 55 or older, and the roles hardest to fill right now are concreters, heavy machinery operators, specialist trades and civil infrastructure workers, according to AWF's 2026 workforce analysis. A reduced apprenticeship pipeline and years of skilled tradespeople moving to Australia for higher wages have compounded the problem.

Healthcare carries the same weight it does in Australia, but bigger relative to New Zealand's smaller workforce. MBIE's Green List lists more than 50 healthcare occupations, more than any other category, alongside construction roles tied directly to projects like Auckland's City Rail Link, and a fast-growing list of ICT roles including software engineers, web developers and building information modellers.

Why is New Zealand short of skilled workers despite 5.6% unemployment?

Because headline unemployment and a skills shortage are two different problems. New Zealand's unemployment rate reached 5.6% in the June 2026 quarter, its highest in roughly 11 years, yet construction firms still cannot find a concreter or a civil engineer. General unemployment counts people looking for any work; a skills shortage counts specific, trained capability that cannot be substituted with an unemployed person from an unrelated field.

That distinction matters for any ANZ business owner reading the unemployment headline and assuming hiring should be getting easier. For most of the roles on Australia's Occupation Shortage List and New Zealand's Green List, it has not, and in trades and technology it is getting harder.

Why is the technology shortage getting worse, not better?

Because the workforce is shrinking exactly when demand is rising. Australia's technology workforce fell to 967,000 in 2025, a 0.3% decline and the first fall in the 12 years the Australian Computer Society's Digital Pulse report has tracked it. Australia needs another 259,000 technology professionals by 2035, roughly twice the growth rate of the wider workforce.

New Zealand's tech sector is worth about $24 billion, 8% of GDP, and its top 200 exporters are growing revenue five times faster than the wider economy, according to Tech New Zealand's 2026 digital skills report. But ICT visa approvals fell 67% year on year to just 729 in 2024, and the domestic pipeline is not filling the gap: participation in NCEA technology subjects has dropped roughly 2% a year since 2015.

What are ANZ businesses doing to cope with the shortage?

Mostly the same three things, in the same order. Raising pay is the most common response, at 75% of Australian employers per Hays, followed by upskilling the team already in place, at 62%, and only then looking outside the local labour market entirely. That third response, sponsoring or hiring overseas talent, has grown from 7% to 37% of employers in a short span, which says a lot about how far the first two options can stretch.

The honest complication is that raising pay and upskilling both take time most businesses under pressure do not have, and neither creates a new concreter, nurse or developer out of thin air. Hiring from outside the local pool, whether through visa sponsorship or an offshore placement, is the one lever that adds capacity rather than competing harder for the same shrinking one.

Can offshore hiring actually fix a trades or healthcare shortage?

Not directly, and it is worth saying so plainly. An offshore hire cannot pour concrete on an Auckland building site or examine a patient in an Australian clinic; those roles need a person physically present. Pear Tree does not claim otherwise.

What offshore hiring fixes is the administrative and technical load sitting behind those front-line shortages, and that load is often the real capacity constraint. A construction firm short on site staff still needs someone running procurement, scheduling and compliance paperwork. A healthcare practice or early learning centre short on clinicians and teachers still needs someone managing bookings, billing and parent or patient communication. In technology, where the shortage is a shortage of developers and analysts rather than desks, offshore hiring is a direct, one-for-one fix: Pear Tree places cybersecurity analysts, software engineers and data specialists from the Philippines and South Africa straight into ANZ teams.

The bottom line

Trades and construction, healthcare, technology and early childhood education will stay the hardest industries to hire in Australia and New Zealand for the rest of 2026. None of the underlying causes (an ageing trades workforce, a shrinking technology talent pool, or chronic healthcare and early learning shortfalls) are going to resolve quickly. Businesses inside those industries have three real options: pay more, train from within, or bring in talent from outside the local market. Pear Tree exists for the third option, placing vetted Filipino and South African professionals directly with Australian and New Zealand businesses to take on the administrative, coordination and technical work that keeps a stretched local team functioning, at 50 to 80% below the cost of a local hire.

AUTHOR BIO: Nick is Co-Founder of Pear Tree, a direct offshore talent placement company helping Australian and New Zealand businesses hire world-class Filipino and South African professionals without the agency markup. With offices in Sydney, Auckland, Cebu, Manila, Cape Town and Hawke's Bay, Pear Tree has placed talent with 750+ companies and maintains a 90% retention rate.