ANZ senior economist Sharon Zollner said the ANZ job advertising series rose 0.6% in October to be 18% higher than a year ago on a three-month average.
This is the first index result since ANZ stopped incorporating newspaper job advertisements. Only jobs advertised online will now be included in the job series.
Auckland and Wellington job advertisements were both 17% higher than a year ago. The slowdown in the rebuild was affecting the Canterbury labour market. The region’s job advertisements were up only 0.4% on a year ago after 16 months of negative results.
Less urbanised regions continued to experience strong growth in labour demand and more than half the regions recorded annual job advertisement growth of more than 3% on a three-month average.
Bay of Plenty was top, advertisements up nearly 50% on a year ago. Taranaki was "dragging the chain", up only 10%, she said.
Otago was sixth among the 15 regions included in the series, up 33.4% on a year ago, slightly behind Nelson-Tasman-Marlborough on 33.6%. Southland had 10.8% growth.
The construction, utilities, manufacturing and transport sector was providing the most job advertisements at present, followed by retail-tourism-recreation, finance, professional, scientific, real estate and administration services.
"Labour demand is very strong and unified regional strength is a telling sign. Although labour supply has also increased, courtesy of both strong net migration and strong labour force participation, we still expect wage growth to soon start to respond."
