KEY POINTS:
News today of 100 redundancies from the merger of Provenco and Cadmus takes the tally of job cuts in the past two months to nearly 1700 nationwide.
This wave of high profile plant closures and redundancies comes as official jobless statistics have begun to rise, though
to levels that would have still seemed remarkably low a decade ago.
A tally of announced redundancies over the past two months numbers 1669 jobs.
Redundancies at the electronic payments firm, do however make an unusual appearance in the growing list of lay-offs dominated by traditional manufacturing and agricultural processing.
These closures have been making the news, with high profile staff meetings, redundancy payouts and union involvement. But it's not only here where jobs are going, as the slump in the residential property market and the building industry also means less work to go around.
ANZ economist Cameron Bagrie said it was important to remember that the good times were not here for ever.
"The lesson here is that - there is a business cycle, house prices did not always go up, the unemployment rate does not always fall," he said.
"There is a good story 'medium term' out - but you always need to have a buffer for that rainy day, because it's not always sunny, that's a message that a lot of people have forgotten - they have become very conditioned to only the good times continuing and while we like to see the good times continuing we will have the odd bump."
Looking at the recent redundancies, Bagrie said there was a "structural element" to where they were happening.
"A lot of where you are seeing lay-offs at the moment has a bit of a structural element to it, you look at the meat industry and it's got huge amounts of over-capacity, the manufacturing sector, well that's a structural trend where they're going to relocate up to Thailand and China and the like."
"On top of that we've got cyclical aspects because we've seen the housing sector slowing and the retail sector is pretty tough."
"But look at the big picture here, we've got an unemployment rate of 3.6 [per cent] - now if it goes back up to 5 then of course that's a big change, but historically that's still very low. I think the danger is you can look at it as a glass half full or a glass half empty."
"But we are going through a correction, it's called a business cycle and we've been here before, but if we can get away with the unemployment rate peaking at 5 then that's still going to be a success."
While jobs were being lost in some areas of the economy, there were sectors with real skills shortages, such as the health industry or teaching.
"There are some pockets of New Zealand where there are big skills shortages, I think the emphasis here is that those people who tend to bear the greatest portion of the adjustment are the unskilled. Where the skill sets are not transferable, there is still good demand out there for skilled workers."
Statistics New Zealand said earlier this month that of people employed fell 1.3 per cent in the March quarter.
The number of full-time workers fell even more, by 1.7 per cent, numbers which surprised economists. The unemployment rate rose from 3.4 per cent in December to a still low 3.6 per cent.
Looking at those job statistics earlier this month Goldman Sachs JBWere economist Shamubeel Eaqub said that while the labour market had been strong, 50 per cent of the jobs created in the past three years had been in the construction, finance, property and business services sectors, and an additional 30 per cent in retail and wholesale trade.
With a housing slump in full swing, he said, the prospect of 25,000 more job losses in the construction sector and a further 35,000 in other cyclical parts of the economy was a very real possibility.
Structural or Cyclical? Who's been losing their jobs:
May 21 - 100 jobs go as a result of the merger between electronic payment companies Provenco and Cadmus.
May 19 - 138 jobs PPCS Burnside plant in Dunedin
- 300 jobs at Sealord mussel processing factory
May 13 - 446 jobs at PPCS Oringi plant near Dannevirke
May 08 - 60 jobs at Tenix ship building in Whangarei
April 17 - 430 jobs at Fisher and Paykel Appliances Mosgiel factory
April 17 - 50 jobs at Tamahine Knitwear Dunedin
April 09 - 145 jobs at Carter Holt Harvey sawmill Kopu
Other job news:
- Up to 97 jobs likely to go in Auckland Museum restructuring.
- ANZ National Bank says it will move 1 per cent of its New Zealand work to India, with up to five per cent by the end of next year. It says this will not mean redundancies, but the affected union says more than 500 jobs will be lost.
