NZ: Tightening labour market - Westpac

Michael Gordon, senior economist at Westpac, suggests that a range of measures for the NZ economy are pointing to a tightening labour market, but the sharp fall in the unemployment rate last quarter may have overstated the case.

Key Quotes

“We’re expecting a partial reversal, with unemployment rising back above 4%. This would still be consistent with an underlying trend improvement.”

“With workers increasingly hard to find, we expect a gradual pick-up in wage growth in the coming years, though the quarterly result itself may not be all that revealing.”