Job ads rise for Canterbury, slip elsewhere, Seek says

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Earthquake-hit Canterbury was the only region with a rise in job adverts on employment site Seek in May.

In the rest of the country the number of new jobs advertised had dipped for the first time this year, while in Canterbury the Seek new job ad index increased 1.5 per cent, Seek said today.

Seek New Zealand general manager Janet Faulding said the growth in demand in Canterbury continued to be driven by reconstruction work, with structural engineers among the most in-demand positions in the region.

Canterbury also had a 6.2 per cent rise in May in the Seek employment index, which is the ratio of new job ads on Seek to the applications for those positions.

That showed the number of new jobs in Canterbury was rising faster than the number of applications, Ms Faulding said.

While the index fell in May across the rest of the country that was not a sign of weakness in the labour market, rather it was evidence of people making renewed efforts to find work.

New job ad listings on seek.co.nz were up 20 per cent on a year earlier last month, with more than 15,000 jobs on the site, despite a slight dip from April.

- NZPA