largely in line with expectations<\/a>.<\/p>\nUnemployment has been steadily rising as business either sacked staff or stopped hiring because of the weak economy, while the workforce has increased despite a slowdown in migration.<\/p>\n
The actual number of unemployed was 160,000, the highest since early 1994.<\/p>\n
The number of unemployed for more than a year was 22,700 or 14.5 percent.<\/p>\n
The level of underutilisation, including the unemployed and under-employed and a measure of slack in the jobs market, rose to 12.9 percent from 12.8 percent, the highest rate since late 2020.<\/p>\n
The number employed was unchanged from the previous quarter, but the economy lost 18,000 jobs over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n
The level of unemployment of young people between 15 and 24 years was 15.2 percent, with the total not in education or training rising to 13.8 percent.<\/p>\n
The regions with the highest unemployment were Northland, Auckland and Waikato with rates of more than 6 percent, with all South Island regions below 5 percent.<\/p>\n
The broad measure of wages showed overall growth slowing to a five year low of 2.1 from 2.4 percent, compared with a 3 percent rise in consumer prices.<\/p>\n
The data was close to Reserve Bank forecasts and is likely to support another 25 basis point cut in the official cash rate to 2.25 percent later this month.<\/p>\n
Analysts were expecting that the unemployment figures would nudge up to 5.3 percent, compared with 5.2 percent in the previous June quarter.<\/p>\n
Last year’s recession and the weak economy have resulted in businesses not hiring and, in some cases, laying off staff.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Nicola Willis told Morning Report today unemployment was always the last thing to correct in a recovering economy.<\/p>\n
She said the government was growing the economy and business confidence with things like tax relief, and big infrastructure spending.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: RNZ Unemployment is up to 5.3 percent 18,000 jobs have been lost over the past year Youth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-118240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}