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New Zealand’s March quarter labour market surveys, scheduled to be released next Wednesday, may have a slightly more subdued tone compared to the improvement seen over the last couple of years. A soft 0.3 percent rise in the number of workers, and an unchanged unemployment rate of 4.5 percent is also expected. Labour costs, which tend to evolve slowly in any case, are expected to be in line with previous quarters, according to a recent report from Westpac Research.
In fact, there have been more tangible signs of a cooling in the labour market. Job advertisements are growing, but at a slower pace than before. The latest Westpac-McDermott Miller employment confidence survey found that perceptions of job opportunities have eased.
And the number of people receiving the jobseekers benefit has ticked up in seasonally adjusted terms. None of these factors on their own are ringing alarm bells, but they do suggest that the strengthening in the labour market over the last few years has become bogged down more recently.
The balance of soft employment growth and lower participation leaves with a forecast of an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent. That would be an improvement from the 4.9 percent rate a year ago, but unchanged from the rate seen in the December quarter. Incidentally, this is also right in line with our best estimate of the ‘neutral’ unemployment rate, which is consistent with inflation neither accelerating nor decelerating.
"We do expect a modest pickup in wage growth over the next couple of years, based on a combination of a tighter labour market, collective pay agreements and minimum wage hikes. But the case for expecting a near-term pickup is weak. CPI inflation has ebbed lower again over the last year, and in our view the labour market is not sufficiently tight enough to warrant much more than cost-of-living increases in wages," the report added.
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