6 Mar 2025
Engineers across Aotearoa are doing it tough, with a pipeline of projects that has all but dried up. Read about engineers’ experiences and what the work shortage has meant for them.
Nina at her desk at Beca.
“I'm quite early in my career, but I've been working since 2021, part time during my last year of university and then full time since the start of last year,” says Nina.
Back in 2021, it was easy to get into engineering jobs. “I remember just before Christmas, clients would want things out, so it was quite busy and there were lots of people doing overtime,” says Nina. “I think it was a good time for hiring.”
But 2024 was a different kettle of fish. “Everything is moving at a much slower pace nowadays.” says Nina.
It’s a slowdown that has flow-on effects.
“Everyone's just being very conservative… where they want to spend their resources, and how much time they want to invest in things, so there’s definitely a difference. It’s been a big change,” says Nina.
There is a lot of uncertainty across the sector for many younger engineers. “For me personally it’s worrying, because this is my first professional role out of university. I do not know what to expect as the future seems to be constantly changing. It’s definitely pushed me to be more adaptive and resourceful at work.”
Nina says in some cases projects had been designed, consents obtained and work started, but construction slowed down when Government departments revised projects to ensure outcomes aligned with the Government’s values.
Asked about applying her skills to different types of projects, Nina says, “When I started, I wanted to be more of a generalist than a specialist, so I think my skill set is transferable and can be applied to different projects.”
However, there are challenges. Nina says a point of difference is that some projects now on the cards are much larger in scope and will require “different people, different teams from different places as well.”
Pictured from left to right are Beca Engineers Alex Dean, Owen Daniell, Nina Chen and Vincent Yan.
Nina says her firm and colleagues have been supportive. “We’ve been pretty open and try to talk about things at our team meeting. So I've been pretty lucky. I know a lot of people my age, or younger or earlier in their careers, are having this little barrier at the start. And it's quite disheartening.”
The slowdown is also pushing young engineers overseas. Nina says, “One of my friends – their firm is offering voluntary redundancies, and they were thinking of taking it up just to go travel. And I know a lot of young people as well that are thinking to head overseas at this time of their career, and then come back when the market is better. But, at the same time, it's also really hard to find a job in international markets.”
“I think there's a lot of people that are looking at moving and I think that’s one of the biggest risks – and there’s already an intermediate engineer shortage in New Zealand that might be exacerbated in the future, because of everything going on at the moment.”
However, there has been a more positive change that has been happening in recent months. “The pace of work has started to pick up now and is looking very optimistic for the coming months. There is definitely more of a buzz this year compared to the end of last year,” Nina says.
Find out more about the impact of the engineering work shortage.
