The overarching objective of work permit policy is to contribute to New Zealand’s capacity base. This objective is underpinned by principles which provide access to global skills and knowledge for both employers and for industries and which also complement the Government’s education, training, employment and economic development policies.
This research aimed to describe trends which have been identified with work permits that require a labour market test, and to provide information useful for a review of work policy.
Purpose
In brief, the research objectives were:
• To describe trends in the number of work permits issued since 1997 by permit criteria;
• To identify work permit holders in 2002/2003 by occupation, region, age, nationality, number of work permits and the number of people who were granted work permits and who went on to become residents;
• To describe employers accredited through Talent Visa policy by their industry type, annual turnover, number of years in business and regional distribution;
• To identify the occupations of work permit holders, identify which were in areas of skill shortage, and to compare these with the occupations of New Zealand workers;
• To identify the industries work permit holders were employed in and compare these with the industries of New Zealand workers;
• To examine the injury risk of industries employing work permit holders.
Methodology
A variety of quantitative methods were used. Immigration databases were queried to obtain information about work permit holders and their occupations. Most of the data was obtained by extraction from the NZIS’s Immigration database. Other data was obtained by file studies, for example, to obtain information on the characteristics of Accredited Employers, the files of all those employers who were accredited by the Employer Accreditation Unit in 2002/2003 were examined. To compare the work-related characteristics of work permit holders with those of New Zealand workers, material produced by Statistics New Zealand (SNZ), such as outputs from the Household Labour Force Survey and the Census of Population and Dwellings, was used. A survey of 200 randomly selected work permit applications was also undertaken. The survey results were used to obtain industry data and also to estimate risk of injury in the industries employing work permit holders.
Limitations
The main limitation was that only 59 percent of the work permit holders of interest had an occupation captured by the Immigration database. While most of the of the analyses were based on information for the period 1997/1998 to 2002/2003, occupation data reported covered the 2003 calendar year. The date ranges of SNZ data was often not compatible with those used in the research. Industry information was collected by means of a survey and consequently is subject to sampling error.