Unemployment Rate

New Zealand Unemployment Rate is the share of the labour force, which means employed plus unemployed people, who are jobless, available and seeking work. Stats NZ, the official statistics agency, publishes it quarterly from the Household Labour Force Survey, the official employment survey running since October 1985. It covers the working-age population, meaning people 15 years and over living in New Zealand, with about 15000 households and 30000 people surveyed each quarter. It does not count benefit rolls, and people who did not seek work in the past 4 weeks are outside the labour force.

Stats NZ releases the rate quarterly in the Labour market statistics release, about 5 weeks after each quarter ends. March quarter results come in early May, June in early August, September in early November and December in early February. Releases go public generally at 10:45am New Zealand time alongside the Quarterly Employment Survey and the Labour Cost Index. Seasonally adjusted estimates, meaning values with normal seasonal patterns removed, are re-estimated each quarter, so earlier quarters can revise slightly.

The rate moves when employment, unemployment or the labour force boundary shifts between work, job search and inactivity.

• Unemployed: people without work who are available and sought work in the past 4 weeks or start a job within 4 weeks. Looking at job advertisements alone does not count.
• Employed: people who worked for pay, worked unpaid in a family business or held a job but were absent. Full-time means 30 hours or more each week and part-time means fewer than 30 hours.
• Not in the labour force: people neither employed nor unemployed, such as retirees, students and people not seeking work.
• Labour force: employed plus unemployed people, the denominator of the rate.
• Underemployed: part-time workers below 30 hours weekly who want and can work more hours.
• Potential labour force: jobless people near the labour force who want work but are not seeking or not available.

In the June 2020 quarter published August 5, 2020 the seasonally adjusted rate was 4.0% down 0.2 percentage points with unemployed down 6000 to 111000. In the same quarter underutilisation, meaning total spare labour capacity, was 12.0% up 1.6 percentage points with total underutilised up 45000 to 346000. Underemployed people rose 33000 to 125000 and the potential labour force rose 18000 to 111000, including available jobseekers up 18900 to 92400. So falling unemployment hid rising slack. Stats NZ said unemployment and employment both fell as more people left the labour force during lockdown.

1. Classify: sort each respondent by reference week, meaning the week before interview, into employed, unemployed or outside the labour force.
2. Weight: weight responses to population benchmarks by 5-year age, sex, Maori group aged 15 to 29 and 30 plus, and 12 regions.
3. Form the labour force: add employed and unemployed to form the labour force.
4. Divide: unemployment rate equals 100 times unemployed divided by the labour force. For example 100 times 111000 divided by 2775000 equals 4.0%.
5. Adjust seasonally: seasonally adjust the rate with X-13ARIMA-SEATS version 1.1 using a multiplicative model and re-run it each quarter. Components are adjusted separately then summed to totals.