{"id":9062,"date":"2025-06-23T21:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T21:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9062\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T21:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T21:56:09","slug":"employment-confidence-levels-remain-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9062\/","title":{"rendered":"Employment confidence levels remain low"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Office<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Unsplash\n<\/p>\n

Employment confidence remains near the lows seen during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.<\/p>\n

The Westpac-McDermott Miller Employment Confidence Index<\/a> rose by 0.5 points to 88.8 in the June quarter, and was little changed over the past year.<\/p>\n

An index number over 100 indicates optimists outnumbered pessimists.<\/p>\n

“A perceived lack of job opportunities<\/a> remains the key concern for New Zealand households,” Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said.<\/p>\n

However, he said the results were encouraging because they suggested the rise in the unemployment rate over the last couple of years may be peaking.<\/p>\n

“That said, people were more pessimistic this quarter about an improvement in job prospects in the year ahead.”<\/p>\n

The survey results were mixed across regions.<\/p>\n

Southland saw the biggest improvement for the quarter and was the most confident region.<\/p>\n

However, other dairying-intensive regions, such as Waikato and Taranaki fared poorly.<\/p>\n

Among the main centres, Auckland saw a solid lift in confidence, but Wellington and Christchurch were down slightly.<\/p>\n

McDermott Miller research director Imogen Rendall said private sector employees were less confident than those in the public sector.<\/p>\n

“Confidence amongst employees working in the private sector has further eroded this quarter with a drop of 2.9 points down to 85.0, while public sector employees’ confidence has increased 7 points up to 96.2,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Unsplash Employment confidence remains near the lows seen during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. The Westpac-McDermott Miller Employment…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5157,64,3240,420,50,5158,5156,5154,5155,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-9062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-jobs","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-podcasts","14":"tag-public-radio","15":"tag-radio-new-zealand","16":"tag-rnz","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114734916383431512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}