Rise of the taskmasters

For people with busy lives and no time for personal tasks, help is at hand for a price.

- Peter Griffin

One of the side effects of having the lowest unemployment rate in 35 years is that it's hard to find anyone to do anything for you.

Restaurants display "Sorry, but we're closed" signs, blaming staff shortages, and tradies take forever to get even modest jobs done for lack of labourers. Try finding a gasfitter who can attend to your needs in the next three months.

The recent frenzy of interest in artificial intelligence may, once the hype has receded, actually produce some labour-saving gains for us, freeing up office admin workers for redeployment. But the gains will be mainly in the digital realm, letting you use an intelligent chatbot assistant to book airline tickets or avoid the tedium of making PowerPoint presentations.

The tight labour market is leading to the diversification of the gig economy and task-oriented start-ups are gaining traction here. It turns out there are plenty of people willing to run a casual errand here and there for a fee rather than committing to a day job.

I had an approach last week from tagVIP, "a team of personal assistants who can take care of a bunch of your personal, nonwork-related tasks".

For $36 a week, tagVIP will complete a series of errands, such as a weekly drycleaning pick up and drop off, a fortnightly online grocery shop, and a monthly drop off of your pet for grooming. For $80 a week, they'll even manage my email inbox.

It's clearly aimed at people who are so busy trying to find staff to keep their business running that even the basic day-to-day chores are too much.

"We're very proud to be allowed to share that one of our clients is Tory Whanau, our new mayor!" the Wellington tagVIP rep told me.