The latest figure was released this morning by Stats NZ.
“Unemployment has been increasing since late 2022. The unemployment rate in the December 2024 quarter was the highest it’s been since the September 2020 quarter, when it was 5.2 percent,” labour market spokesperson Deb Brunning said.
Consensus economist forecasts were for the unemployment rate to rise to 5.1 percent in the three months ended December, from 4.8 percent in the previous quarter.
ANZ economist Henry Russell earlier this week said the labour market was a lagging indicator of the economy.
“While the New Zealand economy appears to have bottomed out and is now recovering, the labour market is still playing catch-up to the past slowdown in activity.”
The second half of last year saw loss of many hundreds of jobs in government restructuring and industrial layoffs, with estimates the economy has shed as many as 30,000 jobs in the past year, while the number of jobs advertised has been more than 20 percent lower than a year ago.
