By Patrick Gower
3 News has counted around 27,000 job ads today – and some of them are duplicates.
With 159,000 Kiwis out of work, is it fair to describe New Zealand's economy as going through a "jobless recovery"?
Hone Morrison wants a job and he was looking at the 127 available at the WINZ office in Lower Hutt today.
After four months on the dole – Mr Morrison got lucky – up to $16 an hour cutting trees.
“Today was quite successful – I got myself a arborist job,” he says.
It was one of:
- 6,087 available at WINZ
- 13,549 at Seek.co.nz
- 7,663 on TradeMe
That is a total of 27,299 job advertisements and the job sites say there is work out there.
“The number of jobs we have at TradeMe jobs is at the highest level in nearly 18 months – so it’s certainly not that gloomy,” says TradeMe’s Jimmy McGee.
Annemarie Duff of Seek.co.nz is also optimistic.
“Job seekers can be a little bit more confident that we are turning a little bit of a corner and we’re going to see that continued pattern of growth,” she says.
The best place to get a job is Auckland – with 11,167 total jobs adverts; the worst is Northland – with 537 adverts.
The official unemployment rate has just taken a sudden jump to 6.8 percent – that's 159,000 people out of work.
But that is based on figures from June, leaving the Social Development Minister happy to talk up today's adverts.
“We need to be stepping up and making sure we're applying for the jobs, putting our CV's forward in the best way we can but certainly we have seen evidence of late there are jobs out there,” Paula Bennett says.
This is only still one job advert for every six people out of work – and some of the jobs may of course be advertised in more than one place.
If there is a recovery, its certainly not an aggressive one – ‘stumbling’ would be a better word.
3 News