The South has bucked the national trend of rising unemployment rates. On Wednesday, Stats NZ said New Zealand’s unemployment rate rose to 5.6% in the three months ended June, an increase from 5.4% for the previous quarter. That translated into 171,000 unemployed people — a rise of 7000 from March, and 13,000 higher than a year ago. The broken down rates show that rise is primarily centred around the North Island, and regions such as Otago and Southland have either remained the same or fallen. Otago’s unemployment rate remained unchanged from the previous quarter at 3.6%, and Southland’s fell from 5.3% in March to 4.7% this quarter. Both Otago and Canterbury had the lowest unemployment rates nationally this quarter — at 3.6%. University of Otago economics researcher Dr Murat Ungor said this could be down to the region’s service-based economy. "There is a lot of private sector in places like Auckland ... firms can be a little bit more reluctant to hire people — with all the global shocks and uncertainty.” That was in contrast to Dunedin which had a heavy service-based economy with large employers such as tertiary institutions and the hospital being more resilient to global shocks and uncertainty. "So basically, we have relatively stable employment figures for these sectors. "If the service sector is relatively stable in terms of keeping the employment levels, then it is understandable that Dunedin has relatively less unemployment problems compared to the other regions.” Much of the South Island was looking more stable than regions in the north, with both Canterbury and Tasman seeing drops in unemployment levels from the last quarter. In March Canterbury was sitting at 4.4%, and has dropped to 3.6%, and the Tasman/Nelson/Marlborough/West Coast region went from 4.6% to 3.7%. All but two North Island regions saw increases in unemployment, with Northland faring the worst increasing from 5.1% to 8.8%. Stats NZ said unemployment had been steadily rising as businesses either made staff redundant or stopped hiring because of the weak economy and uncertainty caused by the US-Iran war. The rise was higher than most forecasts, including the Reserve Bank's estimates in May. laine.priestley@odt.co.nz
