Published: 9 February 2012

Description

This report presents Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) results for the December 2011 quarter.  The HLFS was released by Statistics New Zealand on 9 February 2011.

Link to full report

Employment and Unemployment Report [PDF, 5 pages, 143 KB]

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Summary

The latest HLFS results confirmed that the labour market continued its gradual recovery in the December 2011 quarter, with 3,000 (0.1%) more people employed. 

Employment has now risen by 67,000 jobs (3.1%) since its low-point in the September 2009 quarter, shortly after the end of the recession.  The number of people employed has now recovered to its pre-recession level, although the employment rate is lower because of increases in the working-age population.

The unemployment rate fell from 6.6% to 6.3% (see Figure 2).  This fall was larger than expected and was mostly due to a decrease in the labour force participation rate, from 68.4% to 68.2%, which meant that the size of the labour force decreased slightly.  The labour force participation rate is still slightly above where it was a year ago (68.0%).  New Zealand’s unemployment rate is well under the OCED average of 8.2%.

The Department of Labour expects the labour market will continue to recover but at a slow pace due to high levels of global uncertainty. Economic growth is forecast to accelerate when the Canterbury rebuild gains momentum. Continued growth in employment is expected to see the unemployment rate continue to trend down slowly.

Labour market Summary

Seasonally adjusted	December 2011 quarter	Quarterly change	Annual change
Unemployment rate	6.3%	-0.3	-0.4
Employed	2,221,000	+0.1%	+1.6%
Employment rate	63.9%	+0.0	+0.4
Unemployed	150,000	-4.2%	-3.7%
Labour force participation rate	68.2%	-0.2	+0.2

Author or contact details

For further information please contact the Labour Market Analysis team