Photo: Graduates looking to start a career in the public service are finding themselves at a loose end - qualified and ready to jump into the workforce, but with nowhere to go. In the past two years, close to a third of graduate roles and internship places have been cut from the public service. For some, the dire state of the job industry is driving them overseas, or forcing them to leave their degree behind and take any job they can get. When Amy approached the end of her environmental studies degree in 2024, she had a clear plan for how she would break into the workforce. Having done an internship with the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) in 2023, the organisation's graduate programme seemed like a perfect next step. But her plan was turned upside down at the last minute. "I was shortlisted for that, went through the whole process, I did the written assessment, I did the interview, I did all of that stuff - then they cancelled the programme due to budget uncertainty, so that was quite a setback for me." Amy struggled to find another job in the public service, so decided to go back to studying instead. She is now reaching the end of her post-grad diploma. When she saw MPI had brought back its graduate programme for 2026, she thought she would have a strong chance of securing a place - but with fewer spots available due to budget constraints, she was unsuccessful. "It showed me that because there hadn't been a graduate programme for sort of two or three years, the pool of graduates they were choosing from was much bigger and so the talent they were choosing from, there was a lot more there." Now Amy is back to job hunting, and said it has not been an easy ride. "There's so much uncertainty that I'm starting to look at roles outside of Wellington, but also outside of the country. There's not a lot out there, and I can't compete with all of these public servants that have been made redundant that have all of these years of experience."
There have been cuts across the board with nearly every organisation that offered a graduate pathway either cutting, pausing or downsizing their programmes. Public Service Association secretary Fleur Fitzsimmons said the removal of these pathways was a casualty of government cuts. "This was seen as easy cuts to make - they're actually very short-sighted and they'll have a scarring effect on the demographic makeup on our public sector for years to come. They will push more young New Zealanders to Australia." When Charlotte Marsh finished her bachelor's degree in nutrition she did not feel quite ready to leave student life, and decided to pursue her passion and complete a post-graduate diploma in public health. She had already sounded out a number of graduate programmes that she could apply for at the end of the year, and felt secure knowing she had a plan for when her study wrapped up. But when it came time to apply a few months later, all of the programmes had been cut. "It felt like everything I had planned was thrown off, and it was just frustrating to know it was only a year's difference between getting one of these roles and then leaving uni with essentially no plan." She spent six months looking for a job in her field, with no luck. "It was awful, Pretty much you'd apply, if you were applying on Seek you'd see there was over 1000 applicants. When I was on government pages I'd apply for jobs and I wouldn't hear back for months, even jobs I felt super-qualified for. "You'd put hours into the application and you'd just get a generic rejection before even the interview stage. I never ended up getting an interview in the public sector."
After a gruelling job hunt, Marsh had to put her four years of study aside and has now taken a job as a flight attendant. "It was sort of a forced career change, just based on the fact that it was taking such a toll on my mental health, looking for jobs." It comes as students at Victoria University delivered a petition calling for the reinstatement of graduate roles in the public service. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association president Liban Ali, who had been running a campaign highlighting the issue, said students felt securing employment after university was the most pressing issue for them. "A lot of students come to university aspiring to get well-off jobs, but also get an opportunity to do something they're really passionate about. "And what has happened in the last two years is that a lot of those potential jobs or graduate programmes where they can transition into the profession they've studied in, or profession they're really passionate about, isn't there anymore."
As part of the 'Where's the Work?' campaign, Ali and the student executive had been gathering signatures for a petition to deliver to Labour's spokesperson for the public service, Camilla Belich. The group decided to hand over the petition at the airport to represent the raft of students moving overseas in search of better job opportunities. The Department of Conservation, Stats NZ, Te Puni Kokiri, Ministry of Social Development, Crown Law and the Ministry for Ethnic Communities all had graduate programmes paused with no set time frame for them to be reinstated. While MPI and Ministry for the Environment had reinstated their programmes after they were paused in 2024, these were both operating at a reduced capacity. The Public Service Commission said it had managed to retain more than half of its graduate programmes across the sector, despite challenging budget restraints. It said the main reason for pausing programmes was the inability of agencies to hire new staff during restructures.
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