August 5, 2015 12:25pm by David Farrar

Employment and Unemployment up

The unemployment rate increased to 5.9 percent in the June 2015 quarter (up from 5.8 percent), Statistics New Zealand said today. At the same time, there were 7,000 more people employed over the quarter (up 0.3 percent).

“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.

“Despite lower quarterly growth, this is still the 11th consecutive quarter of employment growth, making it the second-longest period of growth since the period between 1992 and 1996,” Ms Ramsay said.

That’s now bad.

Over the year to June 2015, employment growth was still fairly strong (at 3 percent) with 69,000 more people employed. The manufacturing industry showed the strongest annual employment growth.

Who remembers the claims on a manufacturing crisis?

The changes are:

Employment up 7,000 for the quarter and 68,000 for the year
Unemployment up 2,000 for the quarter and 10,000 for the year
Labour force up 10,000 for the quarter and up 79,000 for the year
Manufacturing jobs up 10,000 for the quarter and 22,000 for the year!

Despite the increase in the unemployment rate NZ has gone from 13th= to 12= in the OECD. Our rate remains lower than Australia and Canada but higher than UK and US.