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2022-08
Newsletter - August 2022

The incredibly tight labour market has been a key feature of the New Zealand economy over the last two years. Strong demand for goods and services has coincided with the border closures to drive the unemployment rate down as far as 3.2%, its lowest level since the early 1980s.

This month Principal Economist Brad Olsen takes a closer look at Job Seeker Support benefit numbers, which spiked higher when COVID-19 hit and have not come back down as rapidly as the unemployment rate.

Senior Economist Nick Brunsdon looks at the latest population trends. The outflow of young Kiwis as the borders have reopened is sparking fears of a “brain drain”, similar to the loss of workers and skills that affected the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Health and Disability numbers make up a significant proportion of people on Job Seeker Support. Senior Economist Rob Heyes argues that a lot more work needs to be done to understand the challenges faced by these people, as well as enabling them to be better integrated into the labour market.

Our latest Quarterly Economic Monitor was recently published, and the mix of capacity constraints caused by a lack of workers and major cost pressures on household budgets is limiting economic growth around the regions.

And our Grocery Supplier Cost Index, which was launched this month, features in our Chart of the Month. The Index utilises data from Foodstuffs NZ, and it shows that rising supplier costs are playing an increasing part in rising grocery bills over the last year.

Articles
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How many Jobseekers are there?
Benefit numbers have been in the spotlight again in recent times. Despite many assertions, the Jobseeker Support benefit isn’t just a straightforward “unemployment” benefit. Nevertheless, the...
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Te Kuiti
Brain drain hits the regions differently
New Zealand’s population growth has slowed ever since the borders closed in 2020, recently reaching a 33-year low of 0.2%pa. In this article, we highlight how population growth is changing at a...
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pexels-ivan-samkov-8127690
A milestone for the disabled community
Budget 2022 was a milestone for the disabled community with the announcement that the Ministry for Disabled People would be established from 1 July. The Government is signalling that the new...
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Restrained morning
Media Release: Capacity challenges prevent stronger regional economic growth
Economic activity bounced back in the second quarter of 2022, but an even stronger recovery was prevented by the capacity challenges facing regional economies. Infometrics’ June 2022 Quarterly...
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Foodstuffs_Supplies_2022_Resized.original.jpg
Chart of the Month: The Grocery Supplier Cost Index
Infometrics recently released the first Infometrics-Foodstuffs New Zealand Grocery Supplier Cost Index (GSCI), to analyse changes in input costs for grocery goods across New Zealand using a...
Read more
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