The New Zealand labour market didn’t decline by accident. It followed its blueprint faithfully.
This piece looks at the patterns inside that design — the displacement, the churn, the shrinking stability — and the architecture that holds it all in place.
The good news is that once a design is understood, it can be redesigned —
if there’s any real intention to change it.
Fairytale vs Reality
New Zealanders keep being told the same story:
“We have skills shortages. We need more workers. We need more students. We need more pathways.”
But when you look at the outcomes — not the slogans — a different picture emerges.
Wages are shrinking in real terms.
Housing is unaffordable.
Living costs rise faster than incomes.
Entry‑level jobs aren’t entry‑level.
Students can’t get work.
Migrants arrive into hardship.
Employers rely on churn.
And the country becomes less stable every year.
This isn’t a malfunction.
It’s a design outcome.
Welcome to Random Circuits — the diagnostic map of how New Zealand’s labour system actually works, why it produces instability, and what a functioning system would require.
⚡ Local Worker Displacement: The Quiet Engine of Instability
Let’s start with the truth no one wants to say out loud:
Entry-level jobs in New Zealand are no longer entry-level.
Roles that once existed for students, graduates, and early-career workers are now filled by experienced overseas workers entering through the student pathway.
The pattern is consistent:
• A worker with years of experience overseas enrols in a one-year course.
• They gain work rights immediately.
• They enter the labour market as “entry-level.”
• Employers get experienced labour at entry-level wages.
• Local students — with no experience and high tuition debt — cannot compete.
The job title says “entry-level.”
The applicant pool is anything but.
Local youth aren’t losing to peers.
They’re losing to experienced professionals disguised as beginners.
This is not a fair market.
It’s a structurally tilted playing field.
⚡ Work Designed as Churn, Not Stability
Alongside displacement, another pattern emerges:
roles are framed as stable, but many are structurally built on churn.
The architecture is consistent:
• short‑term contracts
• variable hours
• seasonal demand
• high turnover
• roles advertised as “pathways” that function as throughput
These roles are designed to be filled repeatedly, not sustainably.
Migrants arrive expecting progression.
They land in churn.
Locals expect opportunity.
They find instability.
A labour system built on churn cannot produce stability for anyone inside it — not for migrants, not for locals, and not for the country.
⚡ Taxpayer Gaslighting: Blaming the Worker for Structural Failure
Another pattern reinforces the instability:
the system blames workers for the outcomes it creates.
The narrative is familiar:
• “Kiwis don’t want to work.”
• “Young people lack the right attitude.”
• “Locals aren’t suitable.”
• “Migrants are more committed.”
• “If you can’t afford life here, that’s on you.”
This is not an assessment of behaviour.
It is a deflection mechanism.
It shifts responsibility away from:
• suppressed wages
• rising living costs
• displacement
• churn
• qualification‑cost mismatch
• structural disadvantage
…and places it onto the individual.
The worker becomes the problem.
The system becomes invisible.
This is the essence of taxpayer gaslighting:
the public is told the system is fine — it’s the people who are failing.
But the data shows the opposite.
People are not failing the system.
The system is failing the people.
⚡ Elite Insulation: The System Protects Its Beneficiaries
Another pattern sits quietly behind the labour settings:
as instability rises for workers, insulation rises for those who benefit from the instability.
The architecture is predictable:
• profits rise as wages fall
• asset owners gain as housing becomes unaffordable
• churn lowers labour costs
• displacement widens margins
• scarcity increases leverage
• instability for workers becomes stability for the elite
The system creates a class that becomes increasingly untouchable —
insulated from the consequences of the very instability that sustains their advantage.
This is not cultural.
It is not accidental.
It is structural.
The labour model pushes risk downward and funnels benefit upward.
Workers absorb volatility.
The elite absorb reward.
This is the quiet symmetry of the system:
instability for many becomes security for a few.
⚡ The Stability Equation: Why the System Cannot Produce Stability
Every system has an equation behind it — a set of inputs that determine the output.
New Zealand’s labour equation is brutally simple:
If wages are suppressed, housing is scarce, living costs are high, and labour is imported freely, the system cannot produce stability.
Not “may struggle.”
Not “might fail.”
Cannot.
A stable country requires:
• wages that match the cost of living
• housing supply that matches population growth
• genuine entry-level pathways
• hiring practices aligned with the local labour market
• controlled access to global labour
• investment in local capability
• feedback loops that correct failure
• a national baseline of dignity
New Zealand currently violates every one of these conditions.
The result is predictable:
• wages stagnate
• purchasing power shrinks
• housing becomes unaffordable
• students can’t enter the workforce
• migrants arrive into hardship
• employers depend on churn
• living standards fall
• profit margins rise
This is not a temporary imbalance.
It’s the mathematical outcome of the inputs.
⚡ The ‘Loaf of Bread’ Myth
(and the Reality We’re Living In)
One of the most common arguments for low-wage migrant labour is:
“If we paid higher wages, everything would cost more — even a loaf of bread.”
But this argument collapses under the weight of reality.
Many New Zealanders already can’t afford a loaf of bread.
Not because wages might rise —
but because real wages have been driven down while living costs climb.
Stats NZ shows a consistent pattern:
• nominal wages rise on paper
• inflation rises faster
• housing costs rise even faster
• food prices rise faster still
The result:
Every year, the same wage buys less.
Purchasing power is shrinking.
Low wages didn’t make bread cheap.
They made people poor.
The “bread argument” protects margins, not consumers.
The real equation employers are protecting is:
Lower wages → lower labour costs → higher profit margins
It’s not about bread.
It’s about protecting a model built on underpayment.
Fair wages don’t cause runaway prices — instability does.
Countries with higher wages than New Zealand do not have proportionally higher food prices.
What they do have is stability.
New Zealand’s instability — churn, displacement, low wages, housing pressure — is what drives prices up.
⚡ Introducing the Work Integrity Framework
(a concept emerging from the diagnostic pattern)
What emerges from this pattern is the early outline of a corrective architecture — the Work Integrity Framework — a principles‑based foundation for a labour system capable of sustaining stability.
It is not a detailed blueprint.
It is the beginning of a structural conversation about what integrity in work must look like.
The framework is anchored in several essential principles:
• Fair wages — not the lowest wages the system can get away with.
• Hiring practices aligned with the local labour market — not practices that bypass it.
• Accountability for accredited companies — accreditation must mean something.
• Cross‑ministry visibility — so misuse cannot hide in the gaps.
• Public‑health safeguards — including vaccination parity.
• Integrity in job design — entry-level roles must be real entry-level roles.
These principles are not the mechanics.
They are the conditions a stable labour system must meet.
The detailed architecture will come later.
For now, this is the introduction — the emergence of a new organising concept for how work in New Zealand can be structured with integrity.
⚡ The System Is Doing Exactly What It Was Built To Do
New Zealand’s labour model isn’t malfunctioning.
It’s producing the outcomes it was designed to produce:
• suppressed wages
• shrinking purchasing power
• rising living costs
• displacement of local workers
• reliance on churn
• pressure on housing
• widening profit margins
These aren’t glitches.
They’re features of a system optimised for low labour costs, not long‑term stability.
And because real wages have been driven down in purchasing power — not just held flat — many New Zealanders already struggle to afford basics like bread.
Not because wages might rise, but because the system has structurally pushed them down.
The Work Integrity Framework does not claim to solve every issue in the country.
It introduces the principles required for a labour system that does not erode its own foundations:
• fair wages
• balanced hiring
• accountable accreditation
• cross‑ministry visibility
• public‑health safeguards
• integrity in job design
These are the conditions for stability — the baseline architecture a functioning labour system must meet.
Because a country that cannot sustain its own people cannot sustain its future.
These are the voyages of Random Circuits, boldly entering the arena of ideas that disrupt, challenge, and transform.
