NZTech Inform – preview insights from our skills survey

It’s exactly eight weeks until Christmas and there’s still so much to get done this year! 

The write up of our digital skills survey is well underway.  Fortunately, we had almost 200 responses to the survey, including most of the largest employers.  In addition, we have analysed 93,000 LinkedIn profiles and data provided by Ministry of Education, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), Immigration New Zealand and Summer of Tech.  Here are several early insights;  

• There are many jobs available – for example, there are currently 505 software developer/engineer roles currently in the market (from only 147 respondents), and they are forecasting an additional 1,050 new jobs in the next two years. 
• There is declining local interest in technology courses.  Participation and achievement in digital technologies NCEA standards at secondary school has been declining at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of three percent over the past five years. 
• There are fewer skilled graduates entering the market – domestic students graduating with tertiary computer science or information technology qualifications has been declining at a CAGR of nine percent over the past five years, whereas international students are growing at one percent, resulting in a six percent annual decrease in graduates. 
• We have become reliant on international imports – over the past five years, 27,057 visas were granted for people entering ICT occupations and 48,000 international students studied computer science or information technology in our tertiary institutions. 

 
These are only some of the early insights and the final report, due this month, will certainly make for good reading! 
 
All things going well, BioTechNZ’s Medicinal Cannabis Summit will finally take place next week, signalling the launch of New Zealand’s regulated medicinal cannabis market next year.  Having been delayed during our first COVID-19 lockdown, it is great to see MedCan 2020 come to life, and with hundreds more attendees.  
 
This will be New Zealand’s first conference on this high growth sector and programme streams include medicine, science and technology.  I am facilitating the business/technology stream on Tuesday and look forward to showcasing great New Zealand tech firms to the medical community. 
  
In other news, today we launched a website for the Digital Technology Industry Transformation Plan. Working with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and other industry and Government partners, we will use this site to make it easy to find out what is happening and how to get involved. 

Have a great week. 
Ngā mihi

Graeme Muller 
CEO
NZTech 

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