The services sector – which makes up about three-quarters of economic activity – has edged back into growth, but weak hiring shows the recovery remains fragile.<\/p>\n
BusinessNZ chief executive Katherine Rich said the return to expansion was heartening, but the recovery remained tentative.<\/p>\n
BNZ head of research Stephen Toplis said the direction of travel was heading the right way.<\/p>\n
“The good news is that it’s trending in the right direction, it’s just not trending there very quickly.”<\/p>\n
New orders were the strongest sub-index at 53, but activity and sales remained in contraction territory at 49.3, and employment was weakest at 48.8.<\/p>\n
The BNZ report said employment had now been below 50 for 31 consecutive months.<\/p>\n
“If you take this survey at face value, it still means the services sector in totality is shedding labour rather than employing more people,” Toplis said.<\/p>\n
Toplis said that was consistent with unemployment rising, with BNZ expecting the jobless rate to reach about 5.8 or 5.9 percent by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
The survey also showed a split between stronger rural and export-linked activity and weaker consumer-facing sectors.<\/p>\n
Transport and storage was the strongest industry group at 57.2, while accommodation, cafes and restaurants were deep in contraction at 36.3.<\/p>\n
Rich said the hardest-hit parts of the sector were those most exposed to discretionary spending, “where households are still holding onto their money for fuel, food and other essentials”.<\/p>\n
Toplis said rural and export-linked sectors were doing well, while hospitality was still struggling, reflecting a “split economy”.<\/p>\n
He said the lift in new orders was a forward indicator and suggested “better times ahead”.<\/p>\n
BNZ said the lift in services and manufacturing suggested economic growth could soon climb to about 2 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The services sector – which makes up about three-quarters of economic activity – has edged back into growth,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-546796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}