SEEK Employment Report - January

*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to December data.

NOTE: Due to the trend adjustments made in this report, the monthly job ad trend for December has been revised upward. 

National Insights:

• Job ads continued to grow, rising 1.3% m/m and 11.7% y/y. 
• Applications per job ad have been relatively stable for many months, with no change m/m in December.

Region Insights: 

• The strongest m/m growth was recorded in Gisborne (3.9%), Manawatu (2.6%), and Otago (2.2%). 
• Ad volumes in the South Island, notably Otago, Southland and Canterbury, have risen significantly y/y.

Industry Insights: 

• Most industries recorded monthly, quarterly and annual growth in job ads.
• The Construction and Industrial sectors have driven much of the annual growth, rising 20.1% and 16.5% y/y.

Rob Clark, SEEK NZ Country Manager, says:

“New Zealand’s employment market has entered 2026 on a stronger footing than a year ago. Nationally, annual growth is at its highest in over three years and monthly volumes have been ticking up since the middle of 2025. 

“This points to rising strength in core industries such as Construction, Agriculture and Trades & Services, with key parts of the logistics and Information & Communication Technology ecosystem all recording solid to strong year‑on‑year growth, which is welcome news after such a long period of decline.”

“The pattern we are seeing now is one of gradual but consistent expansion rather than rapid swings, which reflects cross-sector stability and optimism from employers."

National Trends

In January, job ads rose 1.3% m/m, and the prior quarter has been revised to steady monthly growth of 1.5% each month since October. 

Job ads are now 11.7% higher y/y, demonstrating a sharp turnaround from double‑digit declines early in 2025 to solid growth in December and January. 

The improvement has been broad based, with most regions and industries recording annual growth in advertised roles in January.

Applications per job ad did not change m/m in December and have all but stabilised at their peak for the past six months. 

Figure 1: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m

NOTE: For the period prior to June 2025, job ad trends are reported to one decimal place. 

Figure 2: Job ads and applications per job ad trend over time

Region Trends

Gisborne led monthly growth with a 3.9% increase injob ads, followed by Manawatu (2.6%), Otago (2.2%) and Taranaki (1.9%). 

Wellington rose 1.5% m/m with a 3.3% rise inGovernment & Defence jobs, while incremental rises in many of the larger industries in Auckland, such as Information & Communications Technology (1.0%) and Trades & Services (1.5%), drove ad volumes up 1.1% for the region. 

Conditions are significantly stronger y/y in most parts of the country, with the South Island continuing to outperform the North Island. In Otago and Southland, ad volumes have risen over 23% y/y due to rising demand for Construction and Trades & Services workers, among others.

Canterbury, Waikato and Wellington are also recording robust y/y gains indicating sustained demand across key population and economic centres. 

Marlborough, where ads have been falling consistently since mid-2025, was the only region to record an annual decline in job ads (-6.0%).

Figure 3: SEEK job ad percentage growth/decline by region, comparing i) January 2026 to December 2025 (m/m) and ii) January 2026 to January 2025 (y/y).

Industry Trends

Most industries recorded monthly, quarterly and annual job ad rises in January, demonstrating broad-based growth across the country and the industries. The Construction and Industrial sectors are outperforming the others, rising 20.1% and 16.5% respectively, while the Consumer Services sector, which is by nature more volatile, has grown 4.9% y/y. 

Only three relatively small industries are still recording lower ad volumes y/y: Mining & Resources & Energy (-5.5%), Science & Technology (-4.8%) and Sports & Recreation (-3.6%). 

By contrast, annual growth was significantly stronger in Construction (36.4%), Farming, Animals & Conservation (32.2%) and Consulting & Strategy (27.6%) than all other industries. 

The top five hiring industries all recorded job ad growth m/m, led by Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (1.8%), Trades & Services (1.5%) and Healthcare & Medical (1.1%). 

Ad volumes declined in a smaller number of industries on a monthly basis. Real Estate & Property recorded the largest fall at ‑2.3%, followed by Legal (‑1.9%), Advertising, Arts & Media (‑1.7%) and Marketing & Communications (‑1.5%). 

Figure 4: Annual job ad growth by sector (y/y)

Figure 4: National SEEK Job Ad percentage change by industry i) January 2026 vs December 2025 m/m and ii) January 2026 vs January 2025 y/y. Ordered by job ad volume

ENDS

Banner photo by ANTONI SHKRABA production.

The data contained in this report can be downloaded here. 

About the SEEK Employment Report

The SEEK Employment Report is New Zealand’s leading employment index and provides a comprehensive overview of the New Zealand Employment Marketplace. The report includes the SEEK Employment Index (SEI) which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications.

To improve this index and continuously ensure its market accuracy, SEEK has recently implemented three main changes to the data within these reports i) the data is reported to one decimal place for the period June 2025 onwards, ii) reporting on trend estimates rather than seasonally adjusted estimates from August 2025 onwards and ii) the inclusion of company listings in the SEI from November 2025.

The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including a) the trend adjustments applied to the SEI; and b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI.

Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks. 

The applications per ad index contains a series break at Jan 2016 when the calculation of this series changed from using gross variables (inclusive of all SEEK job ads) to net variables (removing duplicate job ads). This change has a negligible impact on recent data points, but caution is recommended when interpreting data immediately
following the series break, and particularly in 2016 where growth rates have not been adjusted for the series break.

Disclaimer:

The Data should be viewed and regarded as standalone information and should not be aggregated with any other information whether such information has been previously provided by SEEK Limited, ("SEEK"). The Data is given in summary form and whilst care has been taken in its preparation, SEEK makes no representations whatsoever about its completeness or accuracy. SEEK expressly bears no responsibility or liability for any reliance placed by you on the Data, or from the use of the Data by you.