Jobs that pay more than in the past

While wage growth has been strong in recent years, with most people earning more than before, some industries have seen larger increases in pay in relative terms.

Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan looks back at the 1989 data.

Gareth Kiernan.
photo: RNZ/Rebekah Parsons-King

He found that the ratio of industry wages to average wages in the financial and insurance services sector rose 35% during that period, while the ratio of industry wages to average wages in the electricity, gas, water and waste services sector rose 15.8%.

But compared with the average wage, education and training wages fell by nearly 12%, while wages in arts, recreation and other services fell by 11.3%.

Education and training initially had the third-best ratio but has slipped over the years to just above average.

Kiernan said the size of the workforce in the electricity, gas, water and waste industries declined significantly from the late 1980s to the 2000s.

“Since then, employment has started to pick up again – and this upward trend in employment has also coincided with an increase in average wage rates.”

He said the impact of the public sector wage freeze would be felt in public administration and security.

Wages in the financial and insurance services sector have increased by 35% compared to the average wage. File photo.
photo: 123rf.com

Craig Renney, head of policy at the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, said the termination of contracts for consultants hired to combat the coronavirus pandemic could also have an impact on the industry.

Rainey said financial and insurance services may have experienced such strong growth because of changes in the industry’s structure.

“It probably reflects that we have depersonalised a lot of financial and insurance services and we have moved them online. As we have moved away from branch networks for things like banking and insurance services, we have taken a lot of lower-paid staff out of them and retained a lot of higher-paid staff.”

He said it was likely that skills issues were driving up employment in electricity, gas, water and waste services. “In many of these sectors, the number of people with the skills to do those trades is declining. What you’re seeing is a lack of workforce planning.”

He said retail and accommodation were occupations that “almost anyone” could enter, so the available labor pool was much larger.

That keeps wages low, he said.

The share in retail trade remained flat and that in accommodation and food services fell 6.2%, but both pay below average wages and have remained depressed from 2005 to 2019.

Mr Kiernan said wages might not fall further because of innovations such as self-service retail stores and petrol stations and online booking.

“The sad thing is, these industries also tend to be dominated by women,” Rainey said.

He said healthcare wages were relatively low compared to average wages and had limited growth, reflecting the fact that many women in the industry were doing poorly paid care work.

It’s worth noting, Rainey said, that overall the changes are relatively small.

“The fields that lead at the beginning are generally the fields that lead at the end. The gap between winners and losers in the entire labor market is getting wider, and the rewards of success are falling on fewer and fewer people.”