SEEK NZ quarterly employment report - Wellington continues to stay in pole position for employment

SEEK New Zealand Employment & Salary Trends

(Q2: April – Jun 2019)

-Wellington continues to stay in pole position for employment-

TUESDAY 6 AUGUST, NEW ZEALAND: The SEEK NZ Employment Report for the second quarter of 2019 has seen moderate growth of 1.5% in job ads compared to the same period in 2018 and the average advertised salaries are showing an increase of 3.2%.

Wellington is still leading the way with a significant increase in job ads (10.8%) compared to Q2 2018.  

SEEK Senior Employment Trends Analyst, Leigh Broderick, says: “Nationally, we have seen a levelling off since Q1, but we are still seeing growth compared to last year.”

“Growth has been varied across the country with Wellington continuing to see strong broad-based sector growth in the last quarter, particularly in the Information & Communication Technology sector, while Auckland and Canterbury have seen a decline in ad growth in Q2 when compared to the same period in 2018. Auckland’s ad growth has been impacted by a slowdown in manufacturing and front-line roles (e.g. Sales, Call Centre, Admin/Office Support), and Canterbury mainly impacted by construction related sectors (Trades & Services, Construction, Engineering)” adds Leigh.

The levelling off in job ad growth this year at a national level accords with other signs that the labour market is slowing, explains BNZ’s Senior Markets Economist, Craig Ebert.

“The recent NZIER Quarterly Survey of Business Survey (QSBO) reported patchy hiring over the last few months, including an especially weak result for manufacturers,” Craig explains.

“The other thing the QSBO shows is a good degree of resilience in business’ employment intentions. For all their trend moderation over the last couple of years these were, in fact, still above-average in the early-July edition of the survey.

Official employment figures for Q2 were strong.

“It will be interesting to see how New Zealand’s labour market pans out over the latter half of 2019, with SEEK job advertising helping early to illuminate the trends.

“ Official wage data show firm-to-firmer rates of annual inflation. This is backed up by recent trends in SEEK’s average advertised salary series,” Craig continues.   

JOB AD TRENDS

The top six sectors showing growth by volume for Q2 are Information & Communication Technology (14.1%), Healthcare & Medical (6.5%), Community Services & Development (25.6%), Marketing & Communications (13.5%) Retail & Consumer Products (4.7%) and Education & Training (9.9%). 

Job ad growth by region:

Table 1: Job ad growth by territories April – June 2019 vs April – June 2018

Table 2: SEEK job ads April – June 2019 vs. April – June 2018

SALARY TRENDS

The nation’s average advertised salary is 3.2% with Northland reporting the highest growth of 8.0% and of the major territories, Auckland has the highest growth year on year at 4.1%.

Table 3: SEEK advertised salaries April – June 2019 vs April – June 2018

By industry, Mining, Resources and Energy salaries continue to see the highest surge compared to Q2, 2018 (averaging an 8.7% increase) with Community Services & Development also maintaining a notable increase compared to 2018 (averaging a 4.6% increase).

Table 4: Biggest percentage growth of average advertised salaries by sector April – June 2019 vs April – June 2018

Download SEEK Employment data