2017 – Ongoing jobless tally

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Continued from: 2016 – Ongoing jobless tally

By the numbers, for this year;

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Events

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January

• Gateway Housing Trust: 7 redundancies
• Pumpkin Patch: 560 redundancies

February

• Westland Milk: unknown
• Wellington City Council: 17 redundancies
• Solid Energy/Spring Creek Mine: unknown
• Cadbury Dunedin: 380 redundancies
• The Warehouse: 130 redundancies (est.)
• ABB: 59 redundancies

March

• Credit Union South: 8 redundancies
• Marcs and David Lawrence: 44 redundancies
• Suncorp: 100 redundancies (est.)
• Auckland Libraries: 74 redundancies
• TVNZ: unknown – t.b.a.

April

Otago University: unknown

May

• Silver Fern Farms: up to 370 redundancies

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Unemployment Statistics* at a Glance

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(*  See caveat below)

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Caution: Official Unemployment Statistics

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On 29 June 2016, Statistic NZ announced that it would be changing the manner in which it defined a jobseeker. This   so-called “revision”  would materially affect how unemployment stats were counted and reported;

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Change: Looking at job advertisements on the internet is correctly classified as not actively seeking work. This change brings the classification in line with international standards and will make international comparability possible.

Improvement: Fewer people will be classified as actively seeking work, therefore the counts of people unemployed will be more accurate.

The statement went on to explain;

Change in key labour market estimates:

• Decreases in the number of people unemployed and the unemployment rate
• Changes to the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate range from 0.1 to 0.6 percentage points. In the most recent published quarter (March 2016), the unemployment rate is revised down from 5.7 percent to 5.2 percent
• Increases in the number of people not in the labour force
• Decreases in the size of the labour force and the labour force participation rate

When Statistics NZ ‘re-jigged’ its criteria for measuring unemployment in June, unemployment dropped from 5.7% to 5.2% (subsequently revised again down to 5.1%).

All  unemployment data from Statistics NZ should therefore be treated with caution. Unemployment is  likely to be  much higher than Statistics NZ figures indicate.

 

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References

Statistics NZ: Household Labour Force Survey – Revisions to labour market estimates

Statistics NZ: Labour Market Statistics – June 2016 quarter

Trading Economics: New Zealand Unemployment Rate  to January 2017

Previous related blogpost

Lies, Damned lies and Statistical Lies

National exploits fudged Statistics NZ unemployment figures

Lies, Damned lies and Statistical Lies – ** UPDATE **

2016 – Ongoing jobless tally and why unemployment statistics will no longer be used

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