NZ Unemployment Rate: 4.2% (exp 4.4%; prev 4.0%)
|New Zealand's Employment and Unemployment data for Q1 has been released as follows:
NZ jobs data
- New Zealand Unemployment Rate Q1: 4.2% (exp 4.4%; prev 4.0%) .
- Employment Change (QoQ) Q1: 0.7% (exp -0.2%; prev 0.0%).
- Employment Change (YoY) Q1: 1.6% (exp 0.7%; prev 1.0%).
- Participation rate Q1: 70.4% (exp 70.0%; prev 70.1%).
- Private wages ex-overtime (QoQ) q1: 0.3% (exp 0.5%; prev 0.6%).
- Private wages inc-overtime (QoQ) q1: 0.3% (exp 0.5%; prev 0.6%).
- Average hourly earnings (QoQ) q1: 1.4% (exp 0.9%; prev 0.1%).
New Zealand Q1 20 Unemployment Rate - Full Report:
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent in the March 2020 quarter, up from 4.0 percent last quarter, Stats NZ said today.
“Our surveys captured a robust labour market in the period before New Zealand went into COVID-19 lockdown. The unemployment rate has remained stable at around 4 percent since late 2018, after trending down since late 2012,” labour market and household statistics senior manager Sean Broughton said.
“The impact of COVID-19 on the labour market, including unemployment, hours actually worked, and underemployment, should be clearer in the June 2020 quarter,” Mr Broughton said.
“There was a sharp rise in the number of people receiving Jobseeker benefit support at the end of March and start of April, though this is not the same as the official measure of unemployment.”
NZD/USD reaction
NZD/USD has been whipsawed in choppy market conditions, trading between 0.6030 and the 0.6070s. Today's data has helped the kiwi to move touch higher, +0.2% at the time of writing.
This falls against a backdrop whereby New Zealand is set to exit the lockdown phase and has so far to date show a very healthy scorecard with very encouraging virus containment results, supporting NZD.
Analysts at ANZ Bank explained, in broad-brush strokes, "we’re still in a 0.59/0.60 range and it’s difficult to see that changing ahead of next week’s key MPS/Budget duo, of which all things macro will hang. Unconvinced about the risk recovery, but we’ll see."
It is also worth noting that the bird will find it hard to gain much traction when there is still the possibility of an OCR cut this year and NZD's resilience is likely creating some unease within the Bank.
Description of the Unemployment Rate
The Unemployment Rate, released by the Statistics New Zealand, is the number of unemployed workers divided by the total civilian labor force. If the rate is up, it indicates a lack of expansion within the New Zealand labor market. As a result, a rise leads to weaken the New Zealand economy. A decrease of the figure is seen as positive (or bullish) for the NZD, while an increase is seen as negative (or bearish).
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