NZ still bears up well in world jobless stakes

New Zealand, which recorded an unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent for the December quarter, is still not doing too badly when compared with the rest of the world, says an AUT academic.

Tim Maloney, the head of AUT's economics department, said the recession had hit the United States - which traditionally recorded lower rates of unemployment than many other industrialised nations - particularly hard.

"The [US] housing market has just collapsed, and there are a lot of people who have just come out of university and simply can't find jobs," Maloney said.

The unemployment rate for United States was 2.7 percentage points higher than New Zealand's last December, at 10 per cent.

"The biggest difference [between the US and New Zealand] is that our financial sector is much more concentrated," said Maloney.

"We have many fewer banks and our regulation system is much stronger."

He said Americans had suffered because their regulatory system had let them down.

Britain had a jobless rate of 7.8 per cent in December, while Canada recorded unemployment at 8.4 per cent.

Maloney said the close alignment between the Canadian and US economies was the major cause Canada's higher-than-usual unemployment rate. Before the recession hit Canada had an unemployment rate of around 6 per cent.

He said some European job markets had been particularly hard hit by the recession.

"Spain in particular has been really badly hurt. I think their unemployment rate was over 20 per cent last time I checked."

Australia came in with a lower December jobless rate of 5.5 per cent.

Maloney said Australia had surprised the world community by how well it had fared during the recession.

"[Australia] reacted very quickly to the recession," he said.

Japan recorded a lower unemployment rate than New Zealand in December, at 5.1 per cent.

Maloney said Japan's current rate of unemployment was "outrageously high" when compared with its levels - which have been close to zero per cent - in the past.

Hong Kong's unemployment levels sat at 4.9 per cent last December, while South Korea's jobless rate was just 3.5 per cent in the same month.

Eastern European countries recorded much higher unemployment rates than New Zealand in December. Unemployment in Hungary sat at 10.5 per cent, while 11.9 per cent of Poles faced joblessness late last year.

Surprisingly, Russia was doing a lot better than some of its eastern bloc neighbours, with jobless rate of 8.2 per cent last October.

Some Asian economies were doing better than New Zealand on the employment front.

Hong Kong's unemployment levels sat at 4.9 per cent last December, while South Korea's jobless rate was just 3.5 per cent in the same month.

Maloney said those were much higher levels of unemployment than the two "Tiger Economies" had experienced in the past.

Mexico recorded an unemployment rate of just 5.4 per cent last December, while Venezuela had a rate of 6.6 per cent and Brazil 6.8 per cent.

Maloney said Mexico had benefited from its North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) membership, which meant many US firms had shifted their operations south of the border, creating many new jobs.

When compared with the unemployment rates in some of the world's poorest nations, especially those in Africa, New Zealand has much to be thankful for.

Even before the global downturn, the small war ravaged West African country of Liberia recorded a unemployment rate of 85 per cent in 2003.

Zimbabwe had an unemployment rate of 80 per cent in 2005, while the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru topped the world statistics with a jobless rate of 90 per cent recorded in 2004.

An International Labour Agency report released at the end of January warned that worldwide unemployment had reached a historic high - with 212 million people unemployed last year, or 6.6 per cent of the global workforce.

Thirty-eight million people around the world became unemployed in 2008 and 2009, the report said, and the situation in Europe was most likely to deteriorate further before a recovery could begin.