Rise in new job ads during July

Rising numbers of new job advertisements on the Seek website offer some hope of improving work opportunities after last week's shock surge in the unemployment rate.

Seek today said the number of new job ads on seek.co.nz rose by 6.3 percent in July, and were 45 per cent higher than a year ago.

The Seek employment index - the ratio of new job ads on the website to the number of applicants - rose 5.2 per cent in July, due to the number of new job ads racing ahead of application numbers.

Seek New Zealand general manager Annemarie Duff said the improvement in the index last month contributed to a 30 per cent improvement since July 2009.

"Most importantly, this has been driven by strong growth in labour demand - more jobs being listed in proportion to the numbers of applications per job is the outcome that most jobseekers desire," Duff said.

The Seek figures for July were the first indicators for the September quarter and suggested more growth and a positive labour market may be ahead for the second half of 2010.

Data published by Statistics New Zealand last week put the unemployment rate at 6.8 per cent in the June quarter, reversing most of a sharp fall to 6 percent for the March quarter.

At the same time Maori unemployment was up from 14.2 per cent to 16.4 per cent.

Economists were expecting the jobless rate to rise to 6.4 per cent after its biggest decline in the previous quarter quarter, but last week's rise took them by surprise.

The Labour Party, the Greens and trade unions blamed the Government for the increase in unemployment.

Prime Minister John Key said the Government was working hard to get on top of unemployment.

The weak employment data came hard on the heels of another lurch lower in export dairy prices and continuing declines in net immigration, business confidence and bank lending to the business sector.

- NZPA / NZ HERALD