\u201cWe\u2019ve actually seen employment growth being a bit stronger than we expected but we also see more people looking for work. That is why we have been seeing unemployment going up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stats NZ data show the youth unemployment rate remained historically high last quarter: 25.3% for people in their late teens and 12% for people in their early 20s.<\/p>\n
About 13% of young people were not in any education, employment or training, and those numbers were much higher in Bay of Plenty, Northland, Gisborne and Hawke\u2019s Bay.<\/p>\n
The overall unemployment rate also continued to track much higher in Auckland (6.5%) and Northland (8.8%) than it did in Canterbury (3.6%) and Otago (3.6%).<\/p>\n
In 2024, Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Simon Bridges told Newstalk ZB the Government could be doing more to address Auckland\u2019s weak economy and surging unemployment rate.<\/p>\n
Two years later, the former National Party leader said unemployment remained a very real issue for Auckland and for young people.<\/p>\n
Bridges said there was clear evidence that young people who were becoming \u201cdislocated\u201d from the job market were much more likely to remain out of work for a long period of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some good things happening, but you balance that up against SkyCity<\/a>, Spark<\/a> and others. Well over a thousand jobs in the CBD that have gone.\u201d<\/p>\n There were signs of things picking up and some tech firms he was speaking to are doing exceptionally well, but it was still a \u201cvery slow, gradual, variable, shambling recovery\u201d overall.<\/p>\n Breman said the Reserve Bank \u201ccared deeply\u201d about the situation and was closely monitoring it.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is still a really tough labour market for many households, particularly young households and also people who are being long-term unemployed.\u201d<\/p>\n The central bank governor said getting prices down and getting people spending again was crucial to creating more jobs in the services sector, where about three-quarters of New Zealanders tend to work.<\/p>\n Michael Sergel is Newstalk ZB\u2019s business reporter. He\u2019s been covering business, politics, local government and consumer affairs for over a decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019ve actually seen employment growth being a bit stronger than we expected but we also see more people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1643,138,803,124,29384,4526,219,9435,1866,8455,177973,173514,47963,78,5969,111,139,69,2847,2682,384,13578,10665,544,131,241],"class_list":["post-592211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bank","tag-business","tag-continue","tag-could","tag-decline","tag-easier","tag-economy","tag-expects","tag-find","tag-getting","tag-gradual","tag-gradually","tag-harder","tag-in","tag-much","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-only","tag-others","tag-people","tag-projects","tag-reserve","tag-some","tag-than","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592211","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=592211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}