Unemployment rate rose to 8.2% in Q2 – NBS

Unemployment is up slightly to 5.9 per cent, though job numbers continued to rise in the June quarter, according to Statistics NZ.

That was in line with forecasts and up from 5.8 percent in the three months prior.

The Bureau disclosed that the labour force population, which includes those within the working age, who are willing, and actively looking for work, increased to 74.0 million in Q2 from 73.4 million in Q1, indicating an increase in the labour force by 0.81 per cent.

At the same time, there were 7000 more people employed over the June quarter, up 0.3 per cent, a much slower rate of jobs growth than in the March quarter.

“Even though employment grew over the quarter, population growth was greater, which resulted in a lower overall employment rate for New Zealand”, labour market and household statistics manager Diane Ramsay said. The country’s benign inflation environment and deteriorating terms of trade spurred governor Graeme Wheeler to start lowering interest rates in June, and last week he said the country’s strong migration and labour force participation were among factors supporting the economy.

Elsewhere quarterly wages including overtime rose by 0.5% leaving the annual increase at 1.8%.

On the unemployment and underemployment rates by age, the Bureau reported that 48.7 per cent of Nigerians in the labour force aged 1524 were either unemployed or underemployed compared to 44.3 per cent in Q1, while another 28.4 per cent aged 2534 were either unemployed or underemployed in Q2 compared to 25.9 per cent in the preceding quarter. It is also the first time it has outstripped employment growth since September 2012, said Statistics New Zealand.

“This is the first time since the December 2013 quarter that the construction industry has not been the largest contributor to annual growth in employment”, Ramsay said.

The unemployment rate in the March quarter was 5.8 per cent.

Auckland’s unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent in the June quarter from 6.9 percent in the March period, while Canterbury’s increased 0.2 of a percentage point to 3.3 percent, still the lowest in the country. What’s more, she notes, the state with the lowest black unemployment, Tennessee, had the same unemployment rate for blacks as the white unemployment rate in the state with the highest white unemployment.