NZ may have cut into Oz jobs lead

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New Zealand may have reduced some of Australia's big lead in employment during the past three months, latest figures from the Seek website suggest.

New job ads on Seek rose by 1.8 per cent since April in this country, while dipping 0.7 per cent in Australia, Seek said today.

In Canterbury new job ads grew by 2 per cent last month, with the rest of the South Island up 3.8 per cent, while Auckland dropped 2 per cent, Wellington fell 4.6 per cent, and the rest of the North Island rose 3.4 per cent.

Seek New Zealand general manager Janet Faulding said new job ads were 16.3 per cent higher than a year ago.

The Seek employment index, measuring the number of new jobs on seek.co.nz compared to the applications lodged for those positions, slipped 0.4 per cent in June.

That was because a decline in the number of new jobs advertised was comparatively bigger than that for applications.

- NZPA