Flipping burgers, stacking shelves and folding clothes, the work that students used to dread is now becoming a pipe dream for many.
Students are applying for record numbers of jobs, but there just is not enough work to go around.
With student allowance and loan payments wrapping up for the year, some are unsure how they will survive over the next few months while others are being forced to move home or even drop out of university to stay afloat.
As the final week of exams wrapped up at the University of Auckland, a fun-filled summer break was not forefront of mind for some, but instead how they would get by over the next four months.
Namrata, who has two years of undergraduate study and a master’s degree ahead of her, is yet to secure summer work.
She has been consistently looking for a job since last year.
“I’m looking for a job and it’s so difficult… I’ve been looking since last year [for] any, any [job], seriously just working in the mall or just being just a part-time salesperson, just anything.”
She said for her and many others she knew with little work experience, competition made it incredibly hard to find a job.
Like Namrata, Sara Szulakowski has also struggled to find work despite searching for the past few months.
Szulakowski has now decided to move back home to the Bay of Plenty, where she hopes it’ll be easier to find something.
But if she had it her way, she wouldn’t be moving at all.
“I don’t have a job, I’ve been looking for one but there’s too much competition in the market, you can’t out compete… I have some work experience, a couple [of] years, but not enough to compete with actual adults so I’m going back home.”
After a gruelling job hunt in Auckland Erelyn Lunjevich has also decided to move back home to Waipu, where she has managed to find work.
“It was really hard, because I was looking for one for since the start of the year and I’ve been applying but all of these casual jobs have over hundreds of applicants, and it’s been actually insane.
“I would like to stay in the city because I think we’re about to find a flat, but it’s just not looking like it because there’s no full-time work down here for students.”
‘It’s depressing’: 100 applications and no interview
Down in the country’s vibrant capital, Lexa Kathro, a 23-year-old student, has been looking for part-time and summer work for the past six months with no luck.
She said she has applied for more than 100 jobs without securing a single interview.
Now she is having to put her degree on hold and move back home to Christchurch.
“I can’t afford to live in Wellington off 60 bucks a week for groceries and every other life thing after my rent is paid so I have to leave.
“I wish the decision had been mine and I had not been forced into it by the lack of any kind of job market here.”
After giving up a hairdressing qualification due to the lack of available apprenticeships, Kathro took on an anthropology degree.
But with dwindling job opportunities in that field, she began training to become a speech therapist.
Now that dream has been crushed, too.
“It’s depressing but at this point I just want to be able to regularly afford vegetables and be able to get the brake pads on my car changed because they haven’t in years because I haven’t been able to afford any of this.
“I just want to regularly have food on the table and not be worried about where it is coming from.”
Applications at an all-time high
Student Job Search said between January and November of 2025 it received more than 360,000 applications, a record number, and a 21.2% increase from 2024.
Over the past five years applications shot up by 52%.
RNZ was not able to ascertain how many of these applications were successful, but the sheer number comes as no surprise to Kathro.
“We’re going to end up with an entire generation of people who haven’t been able to do what they need to do with their lives; we’re going to have people that haven’t found their niche or their specialty and we’re going to end up with a massive skill gap.”
Many of the major employers that have traditionally taken on large numbers of students now do not have enough jobs to go around.
Foodstuffs, which operates New World and Pak’nSave, said in the South Island, applications for summer and part-time jobs have risen 117% year on year, with nearly 55,000 applications received between August 2024 and August 2025, compared to just over 14,300 applications in the previous year.
A similar trend was also seen in the North Island.
McDonald’s spokesperson Simon Kenny told RNZ’s Checkpoint the fast food giant had also seen a significant increase in applications over the past few years, while turnover rate had dropped significantly.
While McDonald’s employs 11,000 people nationwide, the restaurant has a further 10,000 applications in its hiring platform.
By Evie Richardson of rnz.co.nz
