SEEK NZ Employment Report- September

• Job ads fell marginally in September. 

• Applications per job ad fell for the first time in a year, declining 2% m/m*.

• Job ads in Canterbury rose 6% m/m, offsetting smaller declines in the other large regions. 

• After two months of growth, West Coast (-12%) and Manawatu (-9%) recorded the largest drops in ad volumes. 

• Professional Services industries recorded solid growth in September, including Insurance & Superannuation (27%), Legal (11%) and Information & Communication Technology (3%).

• Ad volumes within the Construction sector declined the most m/m.

*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to August data.

A 6% rise in ad volumes in Canterbury bucked the trend for all of the other most populous regions in September. 

Auckland, Wellington and Bay of Plenty recorded 1% drops in job ads while Waikato and Otago each declined by 3%.  

As smaller and less populous regions, Gisborne, which grew 14% m/m and West Coast, where there was a 12% decline, are prone to greater fluctuation than the larger areas, with less impact on the national volume.

Over the past quarter, three regions have recorded a rise in ad volumes: Bay of Penty (1%), Northland (3%) and West Coast (12%). 

Applications per job ad rose m/m in Waikato (2%), Taranaki (13%), Tasman (5%) and Gisborne (9%). In Wellington where application per job ad have been rising for 12 months, the longest of all regions, application per ad remained steady with no change. 

Most of the large industries recorded only marginal growth or decline in September, or no change at all. This was true of Trades & Services (1%), Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (0%) and Retail & Consumer Products (-1%). Information & Communication Technology also recorded a rare 3% rise in job ads. 

The more notable declines in September were in Healthcare & Medical (-5%), Engineering (-11%) and Construction (-8%), but these were offset by growth in some of the Professional Services industries including Insurance & Superannuation (27%), Real Estate & Property (17%) and Legal (11%). The relatively small size of the former two industries do make them prone to fluctuation m/m. 

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 MIkhail Nilov