Go South, young man. That's the advice Michael Woodhouse is giving to unemployed in the North Island.
In a television interview at the weekend, the National Party list MP said there was a ''strong mismatch'' between where the labour need was and where the people were.
''One of the things I would say is anybody that wants to see work should head south.''
There were three main areas of very high labour shortage in the South, he said.
''One is Christchurch, and that is all directly related to the rebuild. It has two dimensions - one is construction, but what that does is it draws labour from other industries, and as a consequence, they are starting to struggle to attract and retain staff.
''The second is in the Queenstown Lakes area, where there is very high tourism demand and that is expected to continue into this summer - the immigration numbers are looking very strong for visa issuance.
''The third area is South Otago and Southland in the farming sector.''
The shortage was so significant that he and Social Development Minister Paula Bennett recently announced the labour market test for central skills visas would be relaxed on jobs like checkout operators, because there was demand for this type of labour in Queenstown, and very little supply.
He said the high cost of living in Queenstown was one of the contributing factors to the shortage of labour in the area.
He believed it was up to the accommodation, hospitality and adventure industry sectors to come up with solutions to the problem, so that accommodation was not a significant barrier to working there.
''It's not the Government's role to inoculate business against every risk.
''They [businesses] certainly need to take the lead in identifying strategically what those risks are and manage them.''
New measures to encourage skilled migrants and businesses to move to the regions were announced last month.
The rules were designed to boost local economies and meant new migrants would get bonus points for heading to the regions, but they have to stay for 12 months rather than three.
