August 6, 2014 11:19am by David Farrar

Unemployment drops to 5.6%

Stats NZ have reported that seasonally adjusted unemployment has dropped to 5.6%, which is excellent in continuing the trend. NZ now has the 9th lowest unemployment rate in the 34 country OECD. We were 11th lowest last quarter. We are now lower than Australia and Israel. In fact our OECD ranking is now lower than it was in 2008 (10th equal then). Our unemployment rate is 1.8% below the OECD average, and lower than Australia, Canada, UK and US.

Some stats:

Unemployed of 137,000 is 17,000 fewer than a year ago
Unemployment rate of 5.6% compared to 6.4% a year ago
Employed of 2,328,000 – 82,000 more than a year ago
FT employed up 71,000 and PT employed up 13,000
65,000 more in labour force than a year ago
Labour force participation rate is 68.9% compared to 68.1% a year ago
Maori unemployment rate is 11.0%, down from 12.8% a year ago
Pasifika unemployment rate is 11.4% down from 16.3% a year ago
Under 20 unemployment rate is 20.4%, down from 24.1% a year ago
Manufacturing jobs are 246,500 – up from 242,600 a year ago (recall the crisis!)
Number of hours worked is up 4.8% from a year ago (highest growth for many years)
The proportion of under 20s not in employment, study or training has fallen from 8.0% a year ago to 7.4% today