SEEK NZ Employment Report - November

Rob Clark, SEEK NZ Country Manager, says

“Any increase in job ad volume is positive news at this stage, though this is only the second time job ads have risen this year, and only by 1%. 

“While demand for workers in most industries has declined throughout the year there are some that have bucked the trend, notably Banking & Financial Services where ad volumes have boomed over the past two months.

“There were nominal month-on-month rises in Wellington, Canterbury and Auckland which solidifies a period of relative stability for these regions over the past five months, after over a year of broad decline.”

Job ad volumes rose for the first time in four months, and only the second time this year, up 1% in November. 

The rise was predominantly in the major cities, with metro regions rising 0.6% m/m, compared to a 0.4% decline outside the cities. 

Ad volumes are now 21% lower y/y, the slowest rate of decline in 18 months. 

Applications per job ad increased in all regions aside from Southland, leading to a 3% rise nationally in October. 

Rising demand in the three most populous regions drove the national increase in job ads in November; Wellington and Canterbury both rose 3%, while Auckland rose 1%. 

In all three of these regions, ad volumes followed a declining trend for the first half of the year and appear to have stabilised over recent months.

Marlborough, which recorded a 13% decline in job ads in October, corrected in November, rising 12%.

The regions recording a decline m/m were Bay of Plenty (-5%), Northland (-5%), Waikato (-4%) and Otago (-2%).

All regions have recorded rising levels of applications per job ad y/y, led by Wellington (65%), Hawkes Bay (60%) and Gisborne (60%). 

There was notable growth in the Industrial and Construction sectors m/m, with rising demand for Mining, Resources & Energy (15%), Construction (13%) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics workers (5%). 

Last month’s rise in Construction ad volumes marks the largest rise for the industry in almost two years. 

The larger industries within the Professional and Consumer Services sectors recorded declines in jobs ads, notably Healthcare & Medical (-7%), Hospitality & Tourism (-5%), Retail & Consumer Products (-5%) and Information & Communication Technology (-5%). 

One exception is Government & Defence, where ad volumes have risen significantly in the latter half of the year (up 55% since June) after falling dramatically the previous six months.

In the case of Banking & Financial Services, where demand fell dramatically toward the end of 2023, industry growth has predominantly occurred during the past two months, with job ads rising 31% since September.

The data for this report can be downloaded here. 

ABOUT THE SEEK NZ EMPLOYMENT REPORT

The SEEK Employment Report provides a comprehensive overview of the New Zealand employment marketplace. The report includes the SEEK New Job Ad Index, which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications. SEEK’s total job ad volume (not disclosed in this report) includes duplicated job advertisements and refreshed job ads. As a result, the SEEK New Job Ad Index does not always match the movement in SEEK’s total job ad volume.

NOTES

(1) The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including: a) seasonal adjustments applied to the SEI; b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI; and c) the exclusion of Company Listings (included under Company Profiles) from the SEI

(2) The Covid-19 pandemic led to a high level of volatility in labour market data between April 2020 and March 2022. As a result, caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during this period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks

(3) The applications per ad index contains a series break at Jan 2016 when the calculation of this series changed from using gross variables (inclusive of all SEEK job listings) to net variables (removing duplicate job listings). This change has a negligible impact on recent data points, but caution is recommended when interpreting data immediately following the series break, and particularly in 2016 where growth rates have not been adjusted for the series break.

DISCLAIMER

The Data should be viewed and regarded as standalone information and should not be aggregated with any other information whether such information has been previously provided by SEEK Limited, ("SEEK"). The Data is given in summary form and whilst care has been taken in its preparation, SEEK makes no representations whatsoever about its completeness or accuracy. SEEK expressly bears no responsibility or liability for any reliance placed by you on the Data, or from the use of the Data by you.

IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Pixabay.