Labour market in New Zealand predicted to 'turn upwards'
Employment intentions went up to 14.2 in October amid growing business confidence, according to the latest ANZ New Zealand Business Outlook.
Employment intentions are their highest since November 2021, after rising from 11.7 in September.
The reported statistic is the net balance of the positive and negative responses, commonly used in business sentiment surveys, according to the ANZ. The net balance is calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses for each question.
By sector, the highest employment intentions were recorded in the manufacturing industry with 31.1.
Others logged:
- Services (14.7)
- Retail (13.3)
- Construction (7.7)
"The Business Outlook survey suggests the labour market will turn upwards too, but given the labour market lags activity considerably, there are still some hard yards to traverse before then," the report read.
Rising business confidence
The findings come as businesses become more optimistic with confidence going up five points to +66 in October, according to the report.
The report said business optimism continue to rise with a decent lift in reported past activity and employment, despite remaining in negative territory for every sector except agriculture.
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Employment is at -14.6, while business activity is at -18.5 for the month of October.
"The October ANZ Business Outlook survey again showed that steady falls in interest rates are injecting new optimism into businesses," the report read.
"That said, both past activity and employment are still in negative territory economy-wide (ie there are still more firms saying activity and employment in the last month was lower than a year earlier than are saying it was higher). So the pressure remains on."
