Perceptions over job availability drop in December quarter, report shows
Perceptions of current job opportunities among New Zealanders dropped by 3.9 points to a net -8.6 in the December quarter, according to the latest Westpac McDermott Miller Employment Confidence Index (ECI).
The findings indicate that New Zealanders remain concerned about finding and holding a job.
"This likely reflects both the decline in vacancies, and increased competition for those roles as net inward migration has surged," said Westpac Senior Economist Michael Gordon in a statement.
Job vacancies continued to decline in the past three months in New Zealand, according to the latest SEEK NZ reports. Annually, it is now down 25% in December 2023 compared with the same period last year.
According to the Westpac report, how New Zealanders perceive the availability of jobs is also an indicator of unemployment rate.
This drop suggests a "further rise in the unemployment rate in the near term," the report said.
New Zealand's unemployment rate is at 3.9% as of the September2023 quarter, according to the most recent Stats NZ data. The number of unemployed people stood at 118,000.
Employment confidence is up
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Perceptions of current job opportunities is just one of the indices measured in the Westpac McDermott Miller ECI.
In the December quarter, the index found that employment confidence among Kiwis is at 99.7.
This is up by 1.4 points, but remains under 100, meaning Kiwis are more pessimistic about the state of the labour market than optimistic.
"The rise in the ECI this quarter was largely due to a pickup in households' earnings growth over the past year," Gordon said in a statement. "However, that was only in the context of some very weak readings in the previous two quarters."
Imogen Rendall, Market Research Director of McDermott Miller Limited, said confident among public sector employees remain stable, while private sector employees have seen a small rise in confidence.
"Public sector employees are indicating that they have real concerns regarding their future job security," Rendall said. "It will be interesting to see what happens as the year progresses and how this impacts their overall employment confidence."