February 3, 2016 12:32pm by David Farrar

Unemployment drops to seven year low!!!

The unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent in the December 2015 quarter (from 6.0 percent), Statistics New Zealand said today. This is the lowest unemployment rate since March 2009. There were 16,000 fewer people unemployed than in the September 2015 quarter.

Unemployment fell for both men and women over the latest quarter, with the unemployment rate for men falling 0.5 percentage points (to 5.0 percent) and that for women falling 0.8 percentage points (to 5.7 percent).

“Although the number of employed people has risen, there was also growth in the number of people not participating in the labour market,” Ms Ramsay said. “This has contributed to labour force participation falling for the third quarter in a row.”

Over the December quarter, employment grew 0.9 percent, after falling in the previous quarter. This has resulted in annual employment growth of 1.3 percent.

This is good news for everyone except Andrew Little!

It’s probably a bit too good. The HLFS is a survey of 30,000 so has a margin of error. It is quite possible next quarter will see it rise up a bit again. But regardless still a great drop.

Annual wage inflation, as measured by the labour cost index, eased to 1.5 percent, the lowest since the year to the March 2010 quarter. This compares with low annual consumer price inflation of 0.1 percent.

So real wages have gone up 1.4%. Excellent.

The changes from a year ago are: