SEEK Advertised Salary Index - August

NATIONAL ADVERTISED SALARY TRENDS

• Average advertised salaries grew 3.7% in the year to August, slowing from 4.4% the previous quarter. 

• The rate of growth has slowed significantly since peaking at 5.1% in November 2023. 

REGIONAL ADVERTISED SALARY TRENDS

• Canterbury continues to outpace the rest of the nation, with average advertised salaries rising 4.4% year-on-year (y/y). 

• Average advertised salary growth slowed in all regions over the past quarter, mostly in Wellington.

INDUSTRY ADVERTISED SALARY TRENDS

• The Education & Training (8.5%) and Healthcare & Medical (8.2%) industries recorded the greatest rate of growth y/y.

• Professional services industries in general recorded robust growth in average advertised salaries.

SEEK NZ Country Manager, Rob Clark, says:

“At 3.7% growth year-on-year, advertised salaries are currently outpacing the rate of inflation, but only just. 

“Economic expansion in the Canterbury region over the past year is driving up average advertised salaries, but this too has slowed in recent months. 

“Strong growth recorded in the latter half of last year, and as a result of collective agreements for Education and Healthcare workers, bolstered annual growth, but as a whole the pace is slowing.

“As we move toward Christmas and the impact of last year’s growth diminishes, we can expect average advertised salaries to continue to slow.”

Average advertised salary growth has been slowing all year, and in August grew 3.7% y/y. 

This is the slowest annual rate of growth since mid-2022, though this still outpaces pre-COVID averages.

Growth was particularly slow over the past quarter, reflecting the challenging economic conditions and conservative hiring outlook.

Average advertised salaries in Canterbury continue to grow at a robust pace (4.4% y/y), although as with the rest of the nation, this has slowed over the past quarter.  

The rest of the North Island outside of Wellington and Auckland also recorded decent annual growth (4.2%), and with 1% growth q/q, this is where average advertising salaries are rising at their fastest pace most recently. 

In the urban centres of Auckland and Wellington annual advertised salary growth has slowed considerably since peaking in November last year. The slowdown was most pronounced in the capital city, where it has fallen from 5.3% to 3.4%.

Average advertised salary growth in the rest of the South Island, outside of Canterbury, remains very subdued and has decreased from 0.6% to 0.3% q/q.

As a result of wage rises from collective agreements that came into effect over the past year, the Education & Training and Healthcare & Medical industries have recorded the greatest growth in average advertised salaries y/y. 

For Education & Training, the strong annual growth will continue until at least the start of 2025, when the final wage rises for teachers under the current agreements take effect.  

For Healthcare & Medical workers, the robust wage growth over the past year reflects the agreed wage rises that were completed at the end of 2023. With these now in the past, the quarterly wage growth (0.4%) better reflects overall wage growth for the industry. 

Most of the other industries recording relatively strong average advertised salaries are in the professional services such as Insurance & Superannuation (7.7%), Consulting & Strategy (7.1%) and Accounting (5.0%). The major exception being Trades & Services where average advertised salaries grew 5.6% y/y. 

Three industries saw average advertised salaries decline y/y, namely Mining, Resources & Energy (-2.7%), Real Estate & Property (-0.9%) and Advertising Arts & Media (-0.1%)

The data for this report and more information about how the SEEK ASI is put together can be found here.