Time was when migrants and employers could look at a single list to find a match for the job offer that they are using to get a Work or Residence Visa. Alas, it’s not so simple as that at the moment.
Two Codes
For many years, Immigration New Zealand has used the Australia New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) as the tool to decide which job is which. ANZSCO was developed as a statistical tool, and in some ways is not really fit for purpose, but that’s an old topic so I won’t go into it now. Anyway, there was a single source of truth about what being a Painter or a Teacher meant, and everyone had to work with it. This was ANZSCO Version 1.2, hosted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Jobs in ANZSCO were gathered into subject groups and subgroups, in quite a lot of granular detail. Any occupation was described by its title, an overarching description of what a group of such jobs entails, a set of “core tasks” (some of which might not apply to a particular role), the level of experience or qualifications needed to do the job (“indicative skill level”), and in many cases a string of specialisations within the occupation.
A few years ago, New Zealand began the process of introducing its own home-grown classification system. Some of the jobs on the Australian version were very Australia-oriented – lots of roles in mining, for example, which is much more their thing than ours. ANZSCO was missing a number of roles, and job titles, which are very New Zealand – especially those having names and descriptions of duties using terms from te reo Maori.
The result is the National Occupation List, usually simply called the NOL by those who need to work with it. It is hosted by Statistics NZ which says that it has been introduced to replace the ANZSCO. Well, it has, and it hasn’t, which is where things get a bit confusing.
The fact is that New Zealand is actually using both systems right now. The intention is to move completely to the NOL in 2027, but in the meantime we have parallel lists which look quite a lot the same in many places, but in others they do not. To make matters more interesting, both lists sit on the ARIA management system. The look and feel is very similar.
To NOL or not to NOL?
People applying for Residence still use the ANZSCO to class their job. However, now it is the “Immigration NZ View” of ANZSCO Version 1.3 which is hosted by Stats NZ, not by Australia.
By default at present, people must use ANZSCO to find their job for the purpose of applying for a Work Visa; and employers must do the same if they are testing the labour market and applying for a Job Check. However, INZ is progressively adding to a list of jobs on the NOL which must be used for Work Visa purposes instead of referring to the ANZSCO. The list is available on the INZ website. This means that, unless someone is familiar with a particular occupation’s place in the setup, it is first necessary to cross-check that it is on the acceptable NOL list.
Both ANZSCO and the NOL provide the full text of the overarching description of the job. However, the NOL does not give the highly important core tasks, the indicative skill level, and specialisations. For those, one must know to find a link to the Tahatū Career Navigator found in each occupation’s listing. Tahatū is the successor to the Career Services website which, among other things, provides information for New Zealanders to help them choose what jobs they wish to look for.
There are some advantages in tying Tahatū into the equation. For example, it indicates the likely salary range which each job could attract. This sort of information is helpful when assessing how to pitch to Immigration NZ that the job someone is being offered is genuine (i.e., not being under- or overpaid) or is the job suggested by the title that has been given to it. It is a resource used by Immigration staff and, according to an INZ VisaPak of October 2025, is meant to be “the primary source” of information about expected market pay rates. This is an improvement on the previous situation where visa staff were being asked to pick and choose among a range of possible sources, some more authoritative than others.
On the other hand, we now face a situation of needing to check not one, but three bodies of information in order to be sure we are getting it right about a single job for visa purposes. The reason for caution is that, in some cases, the skill level assigned to a job in ANZSCO is different to that applied to the same job in the NOL. Getting this wrong could, for example, derail an employer’s efforts to advertise a role for two weeks, when they find out after the fact that they had to run their job ad for three weeks, and will have to start their Job Check process again.
Still, this set of moving parts is, to my mind, a bit clunky. Things will hopefully improve when the ANZSCO is done away with altogether, hopefully next year. In the meantime, employers and visa applicants, and those advising them, will need vigilance in order to make their way through the half-way house situation that we currently find ourselves in.