Unemployment rate up

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, February 2nd, 2017 - 12 comments
Categories: class war, economy, employment - Tags: , ,

Despite National’s fiddling the figures on the way unemployment is counted, the unemployment rate is on the rise again:

New Zealand unemployment rate jumps unexpectedly

A large number of people entering New Zealand’s workforce has pushed the unemployment rate back above 5 percent.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.2 percent in the three months ended December 31 from a revised 4.9 percent in the September quarter, Statistics New Zealand said. Economists had been expecting the unemployment rate to ease back to 4.8 percent.
…
The participation rate was an all-time high of 70.5 percent. While recent changes to methodology means comparisons with earlier periods aren’t easy to make, the working-age population has been bolstered by record migration.
…
The recently added underutilisation rate, which seeks to measure the potential labour supply, was at 12.8 percent up from 12.2 percent in September. The increase came from more people being unemployed and more people actively seeking work but not currently being available to work. …

12 comments on “Unemployment rate up ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Brutus Iscariot 1
    2 February 2017 at 8:42 am

    The mass of incoming labour explains the figures.

  2. Sacha 2
    2 February 2017 at 10:43 am

    The full release from Stats NZ has some interesting detail and graphs: http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/employment_and_unemployment/LabourMarketStatistics_HOTPDec16qtr/Commentary.aspx

    There are quite big regional differences in unemployment rates, with Taranaki surprisingly high. Nationally 115,200 people are counted as ‘underemployed’.

    This Newshub quote above is wrong: “The increase came from more people being unemployed and more people actively seeking work but not currently being available to work.”

    The relevant graphic clearly shows the increase mainly came from unemployed and underemployed numbers rising. The rise in ‘unavailable jobseekers’ was mostly cancelled out by a fall in ‘potential jobseekers’ in the same period.

    • Nic the NZer 2.1
      4 February 2017 at 10:37 am

      I don’t understand, what’s an un-available jobseeker and why are they counted as unemployed? The term seems to imply somebody who is looking for work which they don’t want to take.

      And ‘potential jobseekers’ is that somebody who might be looking for work if it ‘hit them in the head’?

  3. Cinny 3
    2 February 2017 at 1:13 pm

    What is the governments definition of employed ?

    If someone worked for just an hour a week would they be classified as employed?

  4. Leftie 4
    2 February 2017 at 4:02 pm

    In reality is was always up, National is losing it’s grip on keeping a lid on it’s fudged stats.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.