Skills seen as vital to filling, creating jobs

One of the largest problems employers face is finding employees with enough relevant skills, Otago-Southland Employers Association chief executive John Scandrett says.

"With a lack of relevant skills, many job opportunities are not taken up. This obviously makes it harder for a firm to grow and create further jobs - a roadblock exists and this needs to be broken."

Getting more relevant skills was often complex, he said.

More young people needed to succeed in gaining basic skills at school. It was necessary to get these skills to be able to move on to learning the more specialised skills required to enter the workforce.

The recent Government announcement about funding support for young people to keep them in education or training programmes was important because it was in a supporting capacity, Mr Scandrett said.

Tertiary education needed to focus more on offering relevant skills training in technology fields such as IT and engineering at the expense of, for example, sociology and media studies, he said.

"This means that polytechnics and other specialist training organisations need to keep closely in touch with business interests.

"And there is probably an associated need for better careers guidance services ... to more accurately inform young people about the areas where there is demand for relevant skills."

Where the supply and demand for skills was in balance, business success was more likely to be achieved, Mr Scandrett said.

Asked about the roles schools played in training young people to be ready for work, Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said New Zealand secondary schools had a heavy workload and were "heaving" under the weight of responsibility they carried.

She was reluctant to burden secondary schools further and saw their role in preparing young people for jobs as providing a "classical education" and encouraging learning.

Tertiary institutions such as the Otago Polytechnic were in a position to provide training for sustainable jobs, but the funding had to be available, Mrs Turei said.

Labour youth spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern said schools had a role to play in presenting young people with options.

She also warned about putting too much pressure on schools to provide job skills.

"There are great schemes available that take skills to schools. We need to a lot more of that."

Schools needed to make sure they catered for the diverse range of pupils attending classes, she said.

Council of Trade Unions secretary Peter Conway was in favour of the approach used by Ministry of Social Development when people applied for the unemployment benefit.

Those people's skills were assessed before the ministry tapped into its 60 to 80 industry partners to try to match those skills with employers' needs.

The ministry also paid the employer to help smooth the way into a job for recruits. Although it could be up to $16,000 a person, usually around $5000 was contributed, Mr Conway said.

When the chance of employing someone was "marginal", financial help for wages or training could spur the employer to take a chance on a candidate.

And if there was a particular skill shortage, there was no reason why the amount of money could not be increased, he said.

Rather than spend $2.5 billion on tax cuts for the wealthy, that money could be used to help create jobs.

It was important to target young people, particularly in the Maori and Pacific Island communities where unemployment was high, otherwise their long-term labour market prospects were grim. That would also improve the quality of skills in the future, Mr Conway said.