The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has completed its annual review of two of the Essential Skills in Demand (ESID) Lists – the Long Term Skill Shortage List (LTSSL) and the Immediate Skill Shortage List (ISSL). The Ministry regularly reviews the ESID lists to ensure that they meet the changing needs of the labour market, and to ensure opportunities for New Zealanders first. Changes will be made to these lists in March 2015.
Long Term Skill Shortage List
The LTSSL identifies occupations that have an absolute (sustained and ongoing) shortage of skilled workers both globally and throughout New Zealand. Migrants who gain employment in one of these occupations may be granted a work visa under the LTSSL Work to Residence or Essential Skills instructions. Migrants applying for residence under the Skilled Migrant Category may gain bonus points towards their application if they have an offer of employment, work experience or qualifications in an area of absolute skill shortage identified on the LTSSL.
The outcomes of the review of the LTSSL are to:
1. retain six occupations which were reviewed:
- General Practitioner
- Physicist (Medical)
- Registered Nurse (Aged Care)
- Registered Nurse (Critical Care and Emergency)
- Registered Nurse (Medical)
- Registered Nurse (Perioperative)
The qualifications for using the LTSSL for Registered Nurses in Critical Care and Emergency, Medical, and Perioperative will be tightened to require five years relevant work experience (currently three years) to ensure that migrants are not competing with New Zealand nurse graduates for entry level positions.
2. remove External Auditor
3. remove the following 19 occupations for which there have been very low volumes of work visas over the last five years and for which other immigration options are more suited
- Aeronautical Engineer
- Life Scientist nec (Animal Scientist or Bioinformatics)
- Agricultural Engineer
- Marine Designer
- Agricultural Scientist (Farm Systems Scientist)
- Medical Oncologist
- Biomedical Engineer
- Mining Engineer (excluding Petroleum)
- Biotechnologist (Genetics Scientist)
- Network Analyst
- Cardiac Technician (Clinical Cardiac Physiologist including Perfusionist)
- Nuclear Medicine Technologist
- Educational Psychologist
- Radiation Oncologist
- Intensive Care Specialist
- Social Professional nec (Applied Social Scientist)
- Life Scientist (Regulatory Toxicologist)
- Transport Engineer
- Life Scientist nec (Anatomist or Physiologist (Clinical Respiratory Physiologist Scientist))
4. remove two occupations (Construction Project Manager (Chip sealing, Asphalt or other Technical Manager) (Roading and Infrastructure) and Environmental Research Scientist (Water Quality Analyst)) which have separate over-lapping listings on the LTSSL and are therefore redundant
5. move University Lecturer from the LTSSL to the ISSL.