Market reports
What’s actually moving in NZ tech hiring.
My read on the New Zealand tech and leadership market: what the Seek and Stats NZ numbers say, where the work is coming from, how candidates are feeling, and what the market is paying. Each report is a free PDF.
Issue 02May to July 2026
NZ tech & leadership market report
The elevator is going up, but we started in the basement.
Job ads grew through May and June, then fell in July for the first time in about eighteen months. Here is what actually moved this quarter, and what it means if you are hiring through the rest of 2026.
+6.2%
All NZ job ads, year on year, July 2026
−0.8%
All NZ job ads, month on month: the first fall this cycle
5.6%
National unemployment, an 11-year high
16.7%
of ICT ads mention AI, up from 15.0% in May
Inside this issue
- My take: improving, but from a long way down
- Market pulse
- Reading the contradiction
- Where the work is coming from
- Where the heat is right now, and AI in hiring
- The contracting and leadership markets
- Candidate sentiment: once bitten, twice shy
- What the market is paying: 2026 salary and rate benchmarks
- Signals to track this quarter
We were not on the ground floor, we had fallen all the way to the basement. The elevator is going up and that counts for something, but there are a lot of floors to climb.
PDF, 18 pages, 170 KB
Issue 01March and April 2026
NZ tech & leadership market report
Cautious recovery, uneven ground.
The headline numbers are pointing in the right direction. The picture underneath is more complicated. Here’s what’s actually moving in the market this month.
+10.1%
ICT job ads, year on year
+13.0%
All NZ job ads, year on year
−2.8%
Applications per ad, month on month
6.6%
Auckland unemployment, a 10-year high
Inside this issue
- My take: the recovery is real, but uneven
- Mixed signals from a retrospective market
- Reading the contradiction
- Where the work is coming from
- Where the heat is right now
- The contracting and leadership markets
- Candidate sentiment: warming, but slowly
- What the market is paying: 2026 salary and rate benchmarks
- Signals to track this quarter
Uneven markets reward people who stay active. Waiting for conditions to be perfect usually means waiting until everyone else has worked that out too.
PDF, 13 pages, 4.7 MB
No-agenda conversations
Want to talk through any of this?
I’m happy to have a no-agenda conversation about what this means for your hiring plans.