For students, school leavers, parents and anyone who needs hours that fit around something else. What part time actually means, what you must be paid, the tax code, how many hours a student visa allows, where the shifts are, and the roles on FindMeAJob open right now with part time or casual hours.
See the open roles → Match my CVIf you only read one part of this page, read these.
Part time is regular hours in your agreement. Casual is shifts you can decline, with 8% holiday pay on top. Fixed term has an end date. Check which one your agreement says.
Four hours a week or forty, the same hourly minimum. The only lower rates are for 16 and 17 year olds in their first six months and for people in training.
Add SL to either if you have a student loan. Your employer gives you the IR330 form. Get an IRD number before your first pay day.
Full time in the scheduled holidays. Your visa says exactly, and the 20 hours is the total across all your jobs.
Employment New Zealand sets these. The links go to their pages for the detail.
Your agreement says which days and how many hours. You get four weeks of paid annual leave a year worked out on your usual hours, sick leave after six months, public holidays off with pay if they fall on a day you would normally work, and paid rest and meal breaks. If your hours are cut, that is a change to your agreement and you have to agree to it.
No guaranteed hours. You are offered shifts, you can say no, and the employer can stop offering them. Instead of annual leave you usually get 8% added to every pay as holiday pay, and it should show on your pay slip. Once you have worked regular hours for six months you get sick leave too. Casual is common for hospitality, events and retail, and it suits study. Just know that a quiet month means no pay.
Summer orchard work, Christmas retail, a packhouse season, covering someone's leave. The agreement must say why it ends and when. You get the same hourly pay and leave as anyone else while it runs. If the employer keeps you on past the date without a new agreement, you are usually permanent.
Every job, however few the hours, comes with a written employment agreement before you start and pays at least the minimum wage for every hour, including training and meetings. If you are 16 or 17, the page for 16 and 17 year olds covers the starting-out wage and the school rules. If something is wrong, Employment New Zealand runs a free helpline.
Tax, the allowance, the visa, and how many hours actually fit.
Your main job is M, or M SL if you have a student loan. A second job at the same time is S or S SL. Loan repayments only come out once you earn above the repayment threshold in a pay period, so a small part time job often means none. Get an IRD number before your first pay day or you are taxed at the highest rate.
If you get a Student Allowance, it reduces once you earn more than a set amount a week before tax. StudyLink publishes the current amount. Tell them when you start work and what you earn, because finding out later means a debt. Student Loan living costs are not affected by what you earn.
Most student visas allow up to 20 hours a week during term and full time in the scheduled holidays your course sets. The conditions printed on your visa are the ones that count, and the 20 hours is the total across every job you hold. Employers will ask to see the visa. Immigration New Zealand has the detail. Auckland has the most student roles by far, and the Auckland page lists what is open.
Most students manage 10 to 15 hours a week in term without their grades paying for it. Evenings and weekends are where the shifts are, which is why hospitality, supermarkets and retail are full of students. Say your available hours plainly on your CV and in your cover letter. An employer who knows you can do Thursday evenings and both weekend days will call you before someone who wrote "flexible".
Where part time and casual work actually comes from in New Zealand, and when the shifts fall.
Checkout, shelf filling, online order picking, trolleys. Set rosters, and the biggest employer of students in the country.
Kitchen hand, front of house, barista, dish hand. Bar work is 18 and over. Often casual, which suits exam time.
Shop assistant, stockroom, fitting rooms. Christmas casual roles are advertised from October and often turn permanent.
Offices and schools before and after hours. Short shifts that stack around lectures.
Many run student friendly rosters. Training paid, headset provided, and it reads well on a CV afterwards.
Stadiums, concerts, conferences, catering. Casual by nature. Sign up once, take the shifts you want.
Subject tutoring, sports coaching, swim instruction, holiday programmes. Good money per hour and it fits a timetable.
Library, student ambassador, note taker, research assistant, halls of residence. Ask at your student services desk. These rarely reach job boards.
Orchards, packhouses, vineyards, Christmas retail, camps. Fixed term, full time hours for the weeks it runs, then back to study.
Support worker shifts for people with disabilities or older people. Training provided, weekend and evening rosters, and it changes how you see work.
Real ones exist: customer service chat, data entry and admin for a named New Zealand employer, paid by the hour into your bank account. Most of what comes up when you search is not that. If a job asks you to pay for training or equipment first, to receive money and send it on, or for your bank login, it is a scam. Nobody pays a beginner five hundred dollars a day to type.
Live roles on this site where the employer said part time, casual, weekends, evenings or seasonal. Check the hours in the ad before you apply.
By city: AucklandWellingtonChristchurchHamiltonTaurangaDunedin
Managers filling part time rosters want one thing: someone who will turn up for the shifts they said they could do.
Put your available days and evenings in the first three lines. School or study, any work, sport, your licence, and two referees. The guide shows the layout with an example.
How to write a CV in NZ →Four paragraphs, under 250 words, and the last one says exactly when you can work. The guide has one written by a school leaver you can copy the shape of.
How to write a cover letter in NZ →Part time interviews are short. Practise the five questions you will get out loud with the free interview coach before you say them to a manager.
Practise the interview →This page explains the rules in plain words. It is not legal or immigration advice. The current rates, thresholds and visa conditions are on the Employment New Zealand, Inland Revenue, StudyLink and Immigration New Zealand websites.