In Focus: NZ's engineering sector and the GII

In this article, Redvespa Senior Consultant Pam Wright continues her exploration of the Global Innovation Index (GII), looking at the challenges facing New Zealand's engineering sector in the wake of the GII's graduate assessment.

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Within the 2024 Global Innovation Index (GII), Human Capital and Research is one of our best-performing pillars. However, this ranking comes with an asterisk as the data for six of the sub-pillars within this area is noted as being outdated, and many of our rankings in the sub-pillars of Human Capital and Research rank lowly, between 60 and 75.

In particular, Graduates in Science and Engineering is an input of concern for the aligned sectors in New Zealand. Engineering is particularly topical, as a number of organisations have publicly spoken out or released new initiatives recently.

Engineering & innovation in New Zealand: the graduate challenge

The reality here is New Zealand is losing trained engineers and not enough people are pursuing careers in engineering in the long term. As outlined by Engineering New Zealand, this means we may suffer because, without specialised engineers, “we can’t address our infrastructure deficit and drive innovation-led economic growth.”

Engineering New Zealand figures in 2025 highlight that New Zealand is losing about 2,300 engineers each year, and the problem is increasing due to a number of factors. Central to the challenge is the fact there are a relatively low number of students entering engineering training each year, while those who do study and qualify as engineers tend to leave the country inside the first two years of their career.

Redvespa’s own innovation research revealed that business leaders in the sectors closely connected to engineering see a drop in the value of qualifications over the next decade. In 2025, 32% of respondents viewed qualifications as valued within their organisation, but just 20% saw them as valuable over the next decade. 

Further exacerbating the growth of engineering careers in the country, around a third of engineering graduates in New Zealand end up working in non-engineering roles, while overseas-qualified engineers have struggled to meet strict immigration criteria in recent years. In 2021, of the New Zealand businesses who were trying to recruit from overseas, more than half said it took too long and cost too much to bring in engineers from overseas. 

Additionally, CivilPlan Consultants have identified several key areas that may have harmed New Zealand’s ranking in engineering. This includes the delays to major public projects, which has the flow-on impact of leading to the workforce leaving New Zealand for opportunities. 

Considering the delays to major projects across New Zealand, often due to political will or fluctuating material prices, an argument can be built for the development of a more balanced pipeline of work. This would see large infrastructure projects being offset with private sector projects in a more planned, coordinated approach to infrastructure development. As CivilPlan outlines, the goal is to ensure that “engineering expertise remains in demand.”

A long term plan for infrastructure and development in New Zealand would support organisations like CivilPlan as they look to turn around New Zealand’s engineering team culture, provide meaningful professional development, and work to retain and develop talent which will ensure we have engineers who can deliver projects which shape the future of New Zealand. 

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as there are multiple organisations working to turn around the loss of engineering graduates in New Zealand. Some of these organisations are operating at a government level while others are targeted at a local industry level, such as Fonterra’s Dairy Processing Apprenticeship programme. Commencing with a pilot in 2020-21, this 30-month programme saw 84% of candidates complete their apprenticeship. It directly leads to employment in the industry with Fonterra and provides candidates with transferable skills in the dairy processing industry.

In response to these challenges Engineering New Zealand, ACE New Zealand, and Waihanga Ara Rau have partnered to deliver an action plan which highlights the role engineers play in developing the future.  Engineering New Zealand hopes that this action plan will help improve New Zealand's long term skills shortage, and inspire others to support and grow the engineering sector.

At a level more targeted at the next generation of New Zealand engineers, the New Zealand Skills and Education College (NZSE) introduced a cutting edge new two-year diploma focused on electronics engineering. With the first graduates due out of the programme in 2026, it might be a couple of years before the outputs are recorded in a GII report, but it’s a promising step for engineering inputs.

‍Looking Ahead to the 2025 GII

When the 2025 GII is released, we’ll start to get a sense of whether the sector’s efforts have had any impact on our graduate ranking. It'll also collate disparate data to reflect whether the trend of skilled engineers leaving has continued. While new initiatives may be too fresh for a significant impact on the 2025 GII, it will start to answer questions like:

• Does the engineering sector’s hard mahi supporting itself reflect positively within inputs?
• Will the programs that have been introduced by non governmental organisations be enough to revitalise and retain the Engineering community in New Zealand?
• Is the constant flow of trained expertise away from New Zealand too much for our GII rating to withstand?

For an overview of the Global Innovation Index, click the image below.