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Labour Market Report Fails To Rock The Boat

NEW ZEALAND

Markets are unfazed by a mixed domestic labour market report. The unemployment rate remained at 3.2%, "one of the lowest recorded since the HLFS series began in 1986". Employment was virtually steady and outpaced by population growth, which resulted in a marginal decline in the employment rate, with the participation rate also down slightly versus the previous quarter.

  • Putting this into perspective, the release ended a general run of upside surprises, particularly if one takes into consideration downward revisions to employment change readings for the previous quarter. This tentatively suggests that policy tightening in New Zealand is working, even if the RBNZ still has work to do in this cycle.
  • The swaps market still fully prices a 50bp hike to the OCR come the end of this month's RBNZ policy meeting, after the jobs report failed to move the needle on that front.

Fig. 1: NZ Employment Change Y/Y - Actual vs. Consensus

Source: MNI - Market News/Bloomberg

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