Why Kiwis returning from Australia is not actuallly a good thing and how the full picture is not being shown.

Today the New Zealand Herald reported that more and more Kiwis are moving back from Australia to New Zealand.  Apparently this is because the Australian job market is softening and there are more opportunities in New Zealand.  On the surface this looks like good news, but it's actually not.  When you consider the work available in New Zealand it actually paints a bleak picture.  The work is primarily in construction and engineering.  Now I'm not saying these aren't good opportunities for those who want them but lets look further into the issue rather than just taking it on the surface as being good news.

The types of people who are returning formerly worked in Australia's mining sector and are moving into construction or engineering in NZ.  There are blue collar jobs.  There's nothing wrong with blue collar jobs but questions need to be asked about what opportunities there are for those who are educated and attended university.

Recently a study showed that the majority of jobs on job site Seek in Auckland were based in call centres.  The way this story was presented was as if it was good news, but when you have thousands of people graduating from universities with degrees you have to ask yourself why NZ is only offering customer service based jobs and why there aren't other opportunities.  The average salary for someone starting out in a call centre in Auckland is approximately $40,000 which is low compared to wages overseas.  But not only that, the major issue is that people with degrees are being forced to do jobs they could do without degrees, which kind of defeats the purpose of going to university in the first place.

Not only that, those who truly want to make a go of things in Australia who can offer a variety of skills and qualifications will have no trouble finding work here.  It's only those who are close to the bottom of the scrap heap who will have issues and who will feel insecure.  This is another thing that needs to be mentioned.  According to Kacia Kissick jobs in Melbourne proved scarce which is why she and her husband moved back to NZ after seven years of living in Melbourne. 

Questions need to be asked.

If you lived in Melbourne for seven years and people can get permanent residency after two years (subject to meeting criteria) and citizenship after a further two years, why didn't they take up citizenship?  I can only assume they didn't qualify for citizenship, in which case it's actually not a loss to Australia and New Zealand shouldn't be happy that uneducated people are returning.  Instead the NZ Government should be looking at a demographic breakdown of who is returning and asking what can be done to attract the educated back, because the reality is, those who are educated and can offer employment skills will not return for low wages and a lack of career progression opportunities.