\n It means 165,000 people were
\n unemployed last quarter \u2013 a quarterly increase of 5000 people.\n <\/p>\n
Minister of Finance Nicola Willis chose to look at the positives, with an additional 15,000 getting jobs in the final three months of the year. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe unemployment rate increased 0.1 per cent in the quarter to 5.4 per cent, fractionally below the 5.5 per cent rate forecast by the Treasury in its December Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
NZ Herald business editor at large Liam Dann told The Front Page<\/a> it\u2019s true employment rose, but only slightly. <\/p>\n \u201cIt means we\u2019re seeing some job growth, or at least that it\u2019s starting to stabilise.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I quite like the underutilisation rate, because the unemployment rate is very black and white. You\u2019re either employed or not at all. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you work an hour or two, then you\u2019re employed, and you\u2019re not in the unemployment rate. But there are a lot of people in this economy who work as contractors, have part-time jobs, and would like more work. <\/p>\n \u201cThat number is 13%, and that\u2019s a lot higher. That\u2019s the number of people who consider themselves underutilised and would like to have more work in this economy, but don\u2019t. Those people may well be really struggling with the cost of living and not be counted as unemployed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Dann said economists predict signs of an economic recovery are still there. <\/p>\n \u201cIt just takes a long time on the unemployment and labour market side. It\u2019s always a lagging indicator. There\u2019s a lot of \u2018looking for positives\u2019 – but I think if you step back, you\u2019ve gotta say, this is pretty lousy. <\/p>\n \u201cThis far into the economic cycle. It\u2019s just taking too long. We\u2019ve got interest rates low, we\u2019ve got record exports, a dairy and beef sector boom, and $80 billion record export earnings in New Zealand last year. How come that\u2019s not translating to a stronger economy?\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to the full episode<\/a> to hear more about: <\/p>\n Jobseeker benefitsBusiness confidence and job creationNew Zealand\u2019s strong export performanceEconomic recovery.<\/p>\n The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime\/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.<\/p>\n You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It means 165,000 people were unemployed last quarter \u2013 a quarterly increase of 5000 people. Minister of Finance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17236,806,75888,3105,219,1668,232,6721,225,111,43,139,69,28630,5652,151867,223,61,1865,241,1455,27904,2963],"class_list":["post-266631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-17236","tag-as","tag-climbs","tag-data","tag-economy","tag-front","tag-jobs","tag-labour","tag-market","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-page","tag-signs","tag-spells","tag-the","tag-to","tag-today","tag-unemployment","tag-warning","tag-worry","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266631","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=266631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}