Jobs New Zealanders are no longer doing

RNZ News

13-06-2025

Over the past 25 years 77 percent of service station attendant roles have gone, with people now filling up with petrol themselves.
Photo:
RNZ / Dan Cook
When was the last time you encountered someone working on the forecourt of a service station?
Although we're all used to sorting our own fuel now, there was a time when it wasn't uncommon to have an attendant offer to help.
Data compiled by Infometrics looked at the types of jobs that have disappeared over the past 25 years, and service station attendants are near the top of the list, with 77 percent of their roles, or 5557 individuals, gone.
Telephone betting clerks were also significantly reduced, down 86 percent, although only 114 people.
Footwear production machine operators were lost at a rate of 82 percent, postal sorting officers at 76 percent and mail clerks at 71 percent.
In absolute terms, some of the biggest job losses were among people calling themselves secretaries, "general clerks", and sewing machinists.
Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan, who produced the data for RNZ, said there were a number of major changes that showed up, reflecting the moving makeup of the New Zealand workforce.
There had been a reduction in personal assistant and information entry roles.
"Across a grouping of personal assistant, secretary (general), legal secretary, general clerk, data entry operator, machine shorthand operator, and word processing operator, total employment numbers have fallen from 98,700 to 41,861 since 2000.
"However, many of those roles have evolved into the following nearby grouping covering contract administrator, program or project administrator, office manager, health practice manager, and practice managers - up from 25,543 to 74,634 over the same period."
Professor Sholeh Maani, of the University of Auckland, said roles such as typists used to be a staple in offices but had been absorbed into general administrative duties because everyone would do their own typing.
She said switchboard operators were also no longer a requirement in businesses where automated systems had taken over.
Some of the jobs that disappeared were in manufacturing that does not happen in New Zealand any more.
"Across sewing machinist, footwear production machine operator, hide and skin processing machine operator, knitting machine operator, textile dyeing and finishing machine operator, weaving machine operator, yarn carding and spinning machine operator, and textile and footwear production machine operators, employment has fallen from 14,472 to 5608 since 2000," Kiernan said.
"Across paper and pulp mill worker, sawmill or timber yard worker, and wood and wood products factory worker, employment has fallen from 6408 to 2864 since 2000 - reflecting that we send most of our wood to China as unprocessed logs - although the fall in forestry workers, from 4967 to 3900, is interesting as well, perhaps reflecting greater mechanisation in the industry."
He said farming, too, had become a lot less labour intensive. There was a notable drop in sheep farmers.
University of Otago associate professor Paula O'Kane said the loss of the roles was not always a bad thing, depending on what work people found instead.
"You have that group [that was] highly involved in manufacturing - some will have moved into much more interesting roles in terms of the design or what sits behind the machinery that's used in automation. You'll get a chunk who have actually got much more challenging and meaningful roles.
"And then there's another chunk who've come down to something more menial and potentially less valued."
Massey University professor Jarrod Haar said the evolution of technology changed the workforce.
Machinery had become cheaper and more useful, reducing the number of humans needed in some roles.
Sometimes, it had also allowed roles to be spread more thinly, he said. Someone who might previously have employed an assistant, for example, might now use a virtual assistant who was also working for a range of other people.
There has also been a drop in the number of people calling themselves sewing machinists.
Photo:
123RF
AI was expected to be the next big driver of workforce change.
Haar said it was already disrupting data entry roles, where it could do work previously only handled by humans.
He said there would probably be job losses as the changes were worked through but the market would realign. "We might see new businesses starting or new jobs that don't exist. I think we'll see lots of what used to be done, plus an AI component to it."
Haar said the best advice for employees was to add value wherever they could.
Kiernan said there could be transitional costs as people trained or upskilled.
But he said the fact there had been so much change in the past 25 years and unemployment was still only 5 percent at what was likely to be the peak showed the market could adapt.
O'Kane said there was a generational shift, too. Younger people might not want to work 60 hours a week as older generations had.
"I think younger people are looking for different things out of work and those things are often around more intrinsic motivations. The idea of fulfilment and doing good."
She said younger people were not as interested in middle-level administration jobs, which would probably be taken over by technology.
"I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing in the sense that it will make jobs richer and give people more meaningful work, and work that potentially challenges them more."
But she said if some of the "middle" was lost to AI and other automation, there was a risk that the gap between the "haves and have nots" widened.
"You're going to see the lower level jobs that are still going to be there, the caring roles that are often very undervalued, and then the potentially higher level jobs.
"I think we need to constantly enable people to be upskilled and keep up with technology and keep up with the skill sets that are needed in the modern workplace.
"I think we're looking at a lot more communication skills. That's interpersonal communication, negotiation and really knowing how to work well with people and be innovative and creative as well. And I think we can work with people to support some of those people who potentially maybe weren't moving into those more high-quality jobs to give them the skill sets to enable them to.
"And then, you're still going to have those lower level jobs… those need to be valued."
She said it would be important to look after workers in vulnerable roles, including valuing work done by carers, to ensure they earned enough to live fulfilling lives and were not left behind as the "working poor".
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.