Joint MSD/DoL Quarterly Regional Labour Market Reports - At a glance
September 2010
Published: 4 November 2010
Description: The Joint MSD/DoL Quarterly Regional Labour Market Reports provide regularly updated labour market information at a Regional Council level. Published following the release of the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS), these reports provide timely and accurate labour market information at a regional level.
Full reports: The 12 Joint MSD/DoL Quarterly Regional Labour Market Reports can be downloaded in PDF format below:
- Northland PDF 204 KB
- Auckland PDF 207 KB
- Waikato PDF 216 KB
- Bay of Plenty PDF 206 KB
- Gisborne/ Hawke's Bay PDF 208 KB
- Taranaki PDF 201 KB
- Manawatu/ Wanganui PDF 211 KB
- Wellington| PDF 208 KB
- Tasman/ Nelson/ Marlborough/ West Coast PDF 209 KB
- Canterbury PDF 214 KB
- Otago PDF 205 KB
- Southland PDF 202 KB
Summary
The regional reports convey key labour market information on twelve regions of New Zealand. They include annual trends in labour force participation rates, employment rates and unemployment rates from Statistics New Zealand’s Household Labour Force Survey and benefit figures from the Ministry of Social Development’s beneficiary records.
Key messages to emerge from the September 2010 quarter HLFS release are:
- On an annualised basis, the labour force participation rate for the year ending September 2010 remained at 68.1% for the third consecutive quarter. This is the lowest level of labour force participation for more than four years.
- Regionally, the labour force participation rate rose in only three of the 12 regional council areas between the year ended September 2009 and September 2010. The rate grew the most in the Otago region (up by 2.1 percentage points from 66.3% to 68.4%). Drops in the participation rate were most significant in the Waikato region (down 1.5 percentage points from 69.4% to 67.9%)
- For all regions, employment fell by 1.8% for the year ending September 2010. However, this came as seven regional council areas posted growth over the year. The strongest growth was in Otago, which saw employment grow by 14.3% from the previous year.
- The annualised rate of employment — the fraction of the working age population that is employed —nationally decreased from 64.7% in the year ended September 2009 to 63.6% in the year ended September 2010. Annual average employment rates fell for most regions, except for Otago (which saw the rate of employment rise from 63.3% to 65.3%) and Taranaki (up slightly to 64.7%). The largest fall was in Auckland (down by 1.9 points to 62.2% for the year ending September 2010).
- The highest employment rate — the fraction of the working age population that is employed — for the year ended September 2010 was in Southland (69.6%), followed by Wellington (66.9%) and Canterbury (66.1%). These three regional council areas have shared the three highest rates of employment for the last three years.
- The unemployment rate for the year ending September 2010 rose for 10 out of the 12 regional council areas. Northland had the highest unemployment rate (9.0%, up from 8.3% from a year earlier), with Auckland and Bay of Plenty also on high unemployment rates (both at 8.0% for the September year). Otago saw no change in its unemployment rate (4.6%), and Gisborne/Hawke's Bay saw its unemployment rate drop slightly (from 7.8% to 7.7%).
