New Zealand’s unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent in the three months to September, Statistics New Zealand said on Wednesday, the highest since 2015 and above both the market consensus and the Reserve Bank’s forecast of 5.5 percent. Employment fell 0.1 percent in the quarter. One regional report put the number of unemployed at 174,000, and wage growth of 2.1 percent over the year remains well below inflation of 3.7 percent.
The timing is the story. The release comes three days before the November 7 general election and extends Tuesday’s edition, which had National and Labour deadlocked in the final poll. Two further polls reported since, TVNZ Verian at 29.5 percent for National and 28.8 for Labour and a Taxpayers’ Union poll with the parties half a point apart, keep the race in a statistical dead heat, so a data miss of this size in the final week is one of the few remaining events that can move it.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s coalition campaigned in 2023 on lowering debt, inflation and driving growth, and an Ipsos poll this week listed inflation and the cost of living as voters’ top concern. Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds seized on the figures as evidence against the government’s economic approach. Neither party can form a government alone on current polling, so the result still runs through the smaller parties.
Status: this is an official data release, published, not a forecast. What remains is the election itself on Saturday, after which the Reserve Bank’s rate path and the fiscal programme are set by whichever coalition the numbers produce.