{"id":508799,"date":"2026-06-24T12:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T12:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/508799\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T12:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T12:09:15","slug":"employment-confidence-falls-to-lowest-level-in-22-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/508799\/","title":{"rendered":"Employment confidence falls to lowest level in 22 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest Westpac-McDermott Miller Employment Confidence Index shows employment confidence has plummeted to the lowest point in the survey’s history.<\/p>\n

The index fell by 12.5 points to 83.1 in the June quarter. This is the lowest reading for the survey in its almost 22 year history. The survey began in September 2004.<\/p>\n

The loss of confidence was shared across all of the survey questions, Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said, and was \u201cfairly consistent\u201d across regions, ages and income groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe note though that \u2013 as with our consumer confidence survey<\/a> \u2013 the results here are very much a product of timing. […] the latest survey was held in early June, just before the US-Iran peace deal and the largest of the recent declines in fuel prices<\/a>,\u201d Gordon said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo while the survey certainly highlights the downside risks to the labour market outlook for the months ahead, we\u2019ll also be keeping a close eye on higher-frequency indicators such as vacancies and filled jobs, to see how they progress in light of the latest developments,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n

Westpac surveyed households between 1st June and 12th June, with a sample size of 1,550.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Renewed job market softness<\/p>\n

A net 60% of respondents told Westpac they were experiencing job hunting difficulty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe latest reading is consistent with our forecast of renewed softness in the jobs market in the coming months, with the unemployment rate expected to reach a cyclical peak of 5.6% by the end of the year,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n

Households in the employment confidence survey were also downbeat about the medium-term outlook, with expected job opportunities in a year falling to a net -30%, close to the record lows seen during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC).<\/p>\n

Gordon said a broader range of indicators also suggest that the Middle East conflict has left employers more wary. But in contrast with the weakness in confidence surveys, job advertisements have been steady<\/a> over the last few months, though they remain well below pre-Covid-19 levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Workers\u2019 perceptions of their own job security fell sharply, reaching their lowest level since the Covid lockdown. The fall in confidence was greatest among young workers, Gordon said, who in turn had seen the greatest improvement in previous quarters.<\/p>\n

Only a net 3% of households reported a rise in their earnings over the last year, from a net 14% in the March quarter survey, Westpac found.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was close to the record low that we saw during the Covid lockdown, and the more recent cycle lows in early 2025,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n

A net 12% of households expect a lift in their earnings in the year ahead, which is the lowest reading in the history of the survey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese earnings growth measures have remained at historically low levels in recent years, even through the sharp lift in wage inflation in the years following Covid. We suspect that respondents are viewing this in \u2018real\u2019 terms \u2013 that is, whether their earnings are keeping pace with, or falling behind, the cost of living,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sharp falls regionally<\/p>\n

According to Gordon, most regions reported sharp falls in employment confidence in the June quarter, with the North Island tending to see larger falls than in the South Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis corresponds with the general tone of the economic data in recent months, with stronger conditions in the South Island providing more of a buffer against external shocks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The largest falls in employment confidence were in the Auckland, Waikato and Gisborne\/Hawke\u2019s Bay regions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs with our consumer confidence survey, there was a relatively large drop in employment confidence in Otago compared to the rest of the South Island. While strong export commodity prices are still helping to support economic conditions in the region, the outlook for international tourism and hospitality exports has darkened in recent months,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n

The two areas that bucked the national trend, with overall employment confidence broadly unchanged for the June quarter, were the Taranaki\/Manawatu regions, and the top and west of the South Island.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Consumer confidence<\/p>\n

The release of the Westpac-McDermott Miller Consumer Confidence Index painted just as grim a picture last week<\/a>, with Westpac reporting the index fell by 14.3 points in the June quarter to just 80.4, the lowest level since 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Westpac classifies a level below 100 as indicating that more households are pessimistic about economic conditions than optimistic.<\/p>\n

Westpac senior economist Satish Ranchhod described it as the weakest result since 1991. A net 38% of households told Westpac in the consumer confidence survey that they had cut back their spending on dining out and other entertainment activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest Westpac-McDermott Miller Employment Confidence Index shows employment confidence has plummeted to the lowest point in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-508799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}