Jobs data for Q3 from New Zealand:
Unemployment rate for Q3: 5.4%
- expected 5.5%, prior was 5.6%
Employment change for Q3 q/q: +0.8%
- expected +0.6%, prior was +0.4%
Employment change for Q3 y/y: +3.2 %
- expected +3.0%, prior was +3.7%
Participation rate for Q4: 69.0%
- expected 69.0%, prior was 68.9%
Average hourly earnings for Q3: +1.4%
- expected +1.1%, prior was +0.5%
Private wages including overtime for Q3: +0.5%
- expected +0.5%, prior was +0.6%
Private wages excluding overtime for Q3: +0.5%
- expected +0.5%, prior was +0.6%
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Very strong employment data from NZ, very strong indeed.
The Kiwi$ has jumped on the release, above 0.78 as I type
Note that jobs data tend to be lagging. But a headline result like this is enough to trigger short covering at the very least.
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From Statistics New Zealand (bolding mine):
- Rising employment is more than keeping up with our growing population, while unemployment has fallen to 5.4 percent, Statistics New Zealand said today.
- “Due to strong migration, we have had the largest annual rise in the population in 10 years,” labour market and households statistics manager Diane Ramsay said. “We had 72,000 more people employed over the year, greater than the additional 64,000 people in the population. This pushed our employment rate up, to 65.2 of every 100 adults being in employment.”
- “While employment has grown strongly, the picture for wages is mixed,” Ms Ramsay said. Annual wage inflation was 1.6 percent, as measured by the labour cost index (LCI). This is in line with the past four quarters. Although private sector wage inflation was 1.9 percent, growth in pay rates for the public sector has slowed to 1.0 percent.
- The number of people employed has grown 3.2 percent since September 2013
- Demand for workers from established businesses rose 3.0 percent in the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) – the largest annual increase in over six years
