The impact on NZ university academic staffing over the pandemic years

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) sought information from all eight New Zealand (NZ) universities via Official Information Act (OIA) requests. The requests were for academic staff numbers on 1st May 2019 and 1st May 2023, capturing data before and after Covid-19 lockdowns. We requested numbers for permanent, fixed-term and casual academic staff for each faculty onthose dates with a breakdown of men, women and gender unknown/diverse. The aim was to look for impacts over this period on staff numbers in the sciences and how staff in different types of employment and gender were affected, but we also compared this data to other subject areas taught and researched at NZ universities. Since May 2023 there have been several additional tranches of layoffs at multiple universities which will not be captured in the data we present here. However, while it is arguable whether these new layoffs are due to the impacts of the COVID19 pandemic and subsequent global financial turmoil, we can see that certain subject areas ofacademia have already felt the effects in May 2023. Health faculties fared the best over the period, which might reflect the need for health research and development of the health workforce during a global pandemic. However, these gains were accompanied by large losses in humanities, education, and arts, as well as other subject areas such as fundamental sciences and engineering.