📋 Tender Overview
Key labour market measures showed an increasingly tight labour market with unemployment and underutilisation near record lows employment at an all-time high and wage growth strong Stats NZ said today.The seasonally adjusted unemployment and underutilisation rates fell to 3.4 and 9.2 percent respectively in the September 2021 quarter while the employment rate rose to 68.8 percent.The number of unemployed people fell by 18000 over the quarter to 98000 which combined with 54000 more people in employment drove the unemployment rate down.The strong decline in unemployment brought the rate down to New Zealands lowest rate on record matching December 2007 when it was also 3.4 percent work and wellbeing statistics senior manager Becky Collett said.Key labour market measures showed an increasingly tight labour market with unemployment and underutilisation near record lows employment at an all-time high and wage growth strong Stats NZ said today.The seasonally adjusted unemployment and underutilisation rates fell to 3.4 and 9.2 percent respectively in the September 2021 quarter while the employment rate rose to 68.8 percent.The number of unemployed people fell by 18000 over the quarter to 98000 which combined with 54000 more people in employment drove the unemployment rate down.The strong decline in unemployment brought the rate down to New Zealands lowest rate on record matching December 2007 when it was also 3.4 percent work and wellbeing statistics senior manager Becky Collett said.In the September 2021 quarter the number of underutilised people fell by 36000 to 278000. Around half of this fall came from unemployment.This was the third quarter in the last year with unusually strong falls after last September quarters peak which led to a record annual drop Ms Collett said.The number of underutilised people decreased by 113000 or 28.9 percent over the year.Declines were much stronger for women than men in each aspect of underutilisation leading to a noticeably sharper fall in their underutilisation rate. However the underutilisation rate for men remained lower than that for women this quarter at 7.7 percent compared with 10.9 percent.As were seeing shrinking spare capacity in the labour market with fewer people underutilised the unemployment rate is almost even between men and women and more women are returning to or entering the labour force Ms Collett said.Employment upSeasonally adjusted employment rose 2.0 percent to 2830000 in the September 2021 quarter. This quarterly increase came primarily from women up 39000 or 3.0 percent the largest increase on record with employment for men up 15000 1.0 percent.While employment growth was strong for both men and women the number of women in employment saw the largest quarterly growth in the series Ms Collett said.The employment rate for women was 64.6 percent up from 62.8 percent last quarter. This is the highest rate ever recorded for women up both annually following disproportionate falls in female employment in 2020 and over the two-year period since before COVID-19 first emerged.The employment rate for men was 73.2 percent up from 72.6 percent last quarter.Growth in employment was driven by full-time and permanent employment. Annually the construction industry remained a strong driver and quarterly growth in the professionals occupation group was strong. This group includes health professionals and design engineering science and transport professionals where increases were predominantly led by women.Related data sources like the monthly employment indicators validate this see Employment indicators September 2021. In the year to the month of September 2021 seasonally adjusted filled jobs have increased around 4.1 percent up 88900 with construction and healthcare and social assistance reporting some of the biggest increases.With the second half of the September 2021 quarter affected by stricter lockdown restrictions actual hours worked as recorded in the Household Labour Force Survey HLFS dropped 6.6 percent over the quarter as industries like accommodation and food services and retail trade manufacturing and construction were less able to operate.Wage growth indicating pressure to keep workersThe labour cost index LCI salary and wage rates including overtime increased 2.4 percent in the year to the September 2021 quarter while the unadjusted LCI increased 3.8 percent.Within the LCI there were a greater number of jobs getting large pay increases as businesses attempted to attract and retain staff in an increasingly tight labour market Ms Collett said.The strongest contributors to the indexs annual growth this quarter were construction education and training and healthcare and social assistance. Also many public sector collective employment agreements currently in place will continue to affect annual wage inflation throughout 2021 and 2022.Average ordinary time hourly earnings as measured by the Quarterly Employment Survey QES increased 3.5 percent over the year to reach 35.25.
