Is there future demand of Occupational therapists in New Zealand?

With Top Quality Universities & Institutes, New Zealand possess a globally recognised education system. With the ageing population of the country, role of occupational therapits is becoming increasing important in this small island nation. Also, occupational therapist salary in New Zealand range from $32,000 to $75,000 per annum. This is an extremely wide range including the fresh graduates out of university to highly experienced therapists. Furthermore, the median occupational therapist salary has witnessed slow increase over the previous years to $55,000 per year.
In 2004, there were 1800 active Occupational therapists working in New Zealand according to Occupational therapy board of New Zealand. This is therapist mainly dominated by female workers. This was evident in New Zealand Statistics as well with 89% of them female and 15.1% of occupational therapists work 19 hours or less per week.
Occupational Therapists are a critical component of the Medical System of any country. Due to this, demand and hence the employment for occupational therapists grew strongly between 1991 and 2001, with an annual average growth of 4.{} There were a number of reasons for this sustained level of growth such as: increase in the allocation of money from the government for the mental health sector leading to growth in the number of OTs working in mental health, and an ageing population which indirectly leads to increase in the demand of rehabilitative health services.
The above mentioned historical factors are still driving the demand for OTs. In addition to that, the new zealand federal government has added even more money into its health services policies which will lead to even more deman for occupational therapists. Some of these strategies are.
1. Increased Focus on Individuals suffering from disability to help them to fully integrate them within the wider society. 2. Increased Support for Older People focussing on coordinated, responsive and preventative health and disability for individuals older than 65. 3. The Primary health care strategy: emphasizing renewed focus on providing top quality primary health care service to New Zealand residents.
In addition to the above factors, increase in average age of New Zealanders as the baby boomer generation retires will increase the risk of disabilities and heart attacks. This will result in a significant deman for even more occupational therapists. Nonetheless, we can only guess that the increased work load on OTs would also lead increase in occupational therapist salary.