{"id":273280,"date":"2026-02-08T04:28:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T04:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273280\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T04:28:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T04:28:41","slug":"unemployment-rate-rises-to-5-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273280\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment rate rises to 5.4%"},"content":{"rendered":"

The unemployment rate has risen to 5.4%, the highest since September 2015.<\/p>\n

It was a slight increase from the previous figure<\/a> of 5.3% in the September 2025 quarter, which was a nine-year high.<\/p>\n

There were 165,000 unemployed people in the December 2025 quarter. In the September 2025 quarter, there were 160,000.<\/p>\n

Today’s numbers were worse than forecasts by economists and the Reserve Bank.<\/p>\n

Unemployment rises to 5.4%, defying forecasts it had peaked – Watch on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Jobseekers<\/p>\n

Jobseekers illustration. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

<\/a>The underutilisation rate was unchanged from the previous quarter, and remains at 13%.<\/p>\n

In the December 2025 quarter, the number of underutilised people was 409,000, compared with 407,000 in the previous quarter, Stats NZ said.<\/p>\n

Stats NZ macroenomic spokesperson Jason Attewell said today’s numbers were the highest in a decade, when the unemployment rate was 5.7% in September 2015.<\/p>\n

“Over the quarter, we saw higher levels of engagement in the labour market as both employment and unemployment increased.”<\/p>\n

Earlier today, The Warehouse Group announced it would cut 270 head office roles<\/a> as part of a major restructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unemployment rate has risen to 5.4%, the highest since September 2015. It was a slight increase from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-273280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273280","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=273280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}