Labour Market Reports
Employment & unemployment at a Glance
Published: August 2008
Description
This report presents Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) results for the June 2008 quarter. The HLFS was released by Statistics New Zealand on 7 August 2008.
Link to full report
Employment and Unemployment HTML | PDF [46 KB, 6 pages]
Summary
Employment rose by 1.2% over the June 2008 quarter reversing the 1.3% decline in the March 2008 quarter. Despite the rise in employment, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9% as the labour force participation rate increased from 67.7% to 68.6%.
Labour Market Summary
As the HLFS data has been volatile from quarter to quarter recently, we advise looking at the first half of 2008 as a whole. This shows relatively steady employment and participation but a rising unemployment rate. While this should be interpreted as a softening of the New Zealand labour market, the easing is perhaps not as strong as initially thought after the March 2008 quarter results.
Despite the rise in the unemployment rate, New Zealand’s unemployment rate continues to be very low by international standards and presently is the sixth lowest of the 27 OECD nations with comparable data, and is one of only six countries below 4.0%. The OECD average unemployment rate was 5.7% in the March 2008 quarter, with Australia having an unemployment rate of 4.3%.
Related information
Household Labour Force Survey data from Statistics New Zealand [external link]
Quick facts about the labour market
Future updates
This is a regular report – the next update is due in November 2008. Reports from previous periods can be found in archive
Author or contact details
For further information please contact the Labour Market Analysis team