Jobs decline for second consecutive quarter in June 2009

Seasonally adjusted filled jobs declined for a second consecutive quarter, down 1.3 percent in the June 2009 quarter following a 1.0 percent decline in the March 2009 quarter, Statistics New Zealand said today.

The industries with the largest declines in the latest quarter were manufacturing, administrative and support services, construction, and retail trade.

To the year ended June 2009, the number of actual filled jobs decreased 2.8 percent, which is the largest annual decrease in the LEED series. The same four industries, manufacturing, administrative and support services, construction, and retail trade, were behind the annual decline.

The annual decline in filled jobs (down 2.8 percent) was spread among people aged 50 years and under, with the largest declines recorded for those aged 15–19 years and 20–24 years, down 17.0 and 6.7 percent, respectively.

“The June 2009 quarter figures show the continuing impact of the recession on the labour market, with a further reduction in youth employment and the lowest number of people moving between employers since the series began in 1999,” labour market statistics manager Peter Gardiner said.

The Auckland and Canterbury regions had the largest annual decreases in filled jobs, losing 24,450 and 7,580 jobs, respectively. Nearly half of the national decline in jobs occurred in the Auckland region (46.5 percent), which is high relative to the number of filled jobs in the region (32.9 percent in the June 2009 quarter).

The LEED quarterly series is published with a lag of four quarters and uses information from existing taxation and Statistics NZ sources to provide a range of information on the dynamics of the New Zealand labour market. The large size of the dataset allows breakdowns by age, sex, industry, sector, firm size, region, and territorial authority. These breakdowns are available on Infoshare and Table Builder on the Statistics NZ website. Users should note that this is the last quarter that the ANZSIC96 series will be released through Infoshare and Table Builder on the Statistics NZ website. For more information on LEED, see the Guide to Interpreting the LEED Data.