The latest survey showed less-urbanised regions were showing stronger job advertising than Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Job advertising growth in Manawatu was 15.3%, in Waikato it was 17.5% and in Hawke’s Bay it was 12.9%.
Auckland job ads were 12.2% higher than a year ago and Wellington job ads continued to strengthen at 9% annually.
Canterbury was experiencing its own post-rebuild peak cycle and job ads were 9.7% lower than a year ago.
ANZ senior economist Sharon Zollner said employment demand was strengthening which indicated the economy was growing "solidly".
Labour supply was also surging courtesy of strong migration inflows.
Under-employment, part-term employees available and wanting to work more hours, was still high.
"There is some capacity to absorb the demand. However, the strength and sustained nature of that demand over many months suggests skill shortages will come more to the fore as an issue for businesses to manage over the year ahead."
Total job advertising rose 1.4% in July, seasonally adjusted, its sixth successive increase.
On as three-month rolling average basis, job ads were up 9.8% from a year ago, and growth was accelerating, Ms Zollner said.
Nationwide internet job advertising lifted 2.2% on a monthly basis in July and 13.3% annually.
Ms Zollner said the economic expansion had broadened across the nation concurrently with strength in housing.
Last week, Statistics New Zealand released its revised Household Labour Force Survey which showed unemployment falling slightly to 5.1% in June from a seasonally-adjusted 5.2% in March.
Otago had an unadjusted unemployment rate of 4.5%, up from 4.4% in March.
The unadjusted regional rates are prone to large swings.
The region’s participation rate fell to 66.2% from 69.8% with a 3.5% sampling error.
ANZ senior economist Philip Borkin said due to methodological changes, many of Statistics NZ’s figures needed to be taken with a grain of salt, particularly the surge in employment. In many ways, quarterly comparisons looked meaningless.
Because of the issues with data quality, ANZ was inclined to look through the results of the HLFS and stay with its previous premise of the labour market being in "decent shape" and the unemployment rate was trending lower, he said.
Spare capacity was being absorbed, but only gradually, and was contributing to modest wage growth.
The Reserve Bank was likely to take little from the employment data, Mr Borkin said.
