The rate is stable at levels economists sometimes describe as "full employment".
In other words, the economy is near capacity and many sectors are struggling to find workers.
Traditionally that would be forcing wages up. But it is just not happening.
Despite repeated warnings from employer groups about the Government's worker-friendly policies, the near-term prospects don't look good either.
Average wage growth came in at just 2 per cent for the year to March.
That's marginally ahead of the rate of consumer price inflation at 1.5 per cent, but on a typical Kiwi worker's salary, far from transformational.
Wage growth was "failing to fire", ASB senior economist Mark Smith wrote in his analysis of today's Labour data.
"Slowing [domestic economic] growth looks to be translating into the softer demand for labour, with employment readings looking to be weak, outside of a sizeable jump in hours worked.
In fact, that suggested that despite the tightening unemployment number, some slack is now coming back into the labour market, he said.
"Our expectation is that sluggish GDP growth will likely translate into additional labour market slack and keep wage inflation low, necessitating more policy support."
In other words, your best shot of a wage boost is now either some sort of government subsidy or regulation that forces your employer to pay you more.
"Wage inflation was soft," ANZ economists said in their breakdown of the numbers.
"Outside of regulated wage increases, underlying wage inflation continues to edge higher only very slowly," they wrote.
"We expect further increases in wage growth to be gradual, with the peak in capacity pressures now behind us. However, the risks are tilted to the downside should weakness in GDP growth spill over further into the labour market.
So, the sweet spot in the traditional economic cycle where wages usually rise is probably over already!
It's normal for wage growth to be the last piece of data to join the economic party.
But in this long, slow expansion, wages have stubbornly refused to rise in any meaningful way.
The experts describe it as a breakdown in the Phillips Curve.
That's model invented by New Zealand economist Bill Phillips which described the way falling unemployment flows through to higher wages.
In the simplest sense, it is just supply and demand applied to the labour market. It intuitively makes sense.
The trouble is - along with price inflation - it has just not kicked in this time around and economists are baffled.
That's not to say there aren't numerous theories about the causes.
These include the way the internet has created real-time systems for identifying the lowest available pricing.
A double-edged sword which is great for consumers - terrible for workers.
Then there is globalisation with technology and improved transportation, which has effectively put many workers into competition with low-wage third world economies.
The problem is how we fix this.
There are political responses that push back to more socialist economic theories.
Some have accused the current Government of heading in that direction with labour law changes.
But this Government (Finance Minister Grant Robertson especially) claims to be acutely aware of the real culprit - low productivity.
Ideally, we'd all work smarter, not harder and create more wealth, which would create a broadly higher-skilled higher-wage economy.
Are there new ways to boost productivity? Well, that's what the Government has set up the Productivity Commission to find out.
One of the mysteries of this century's internet-led tech boom is the extent that it has failed to boost individual worker productivity.
The communications revolution - for all its shiny short cuts - has kept us busier without making us more efficient.
The big-picture solutions all seem to be long, slow burns - encouraging more business investment in R&D, better skills training and tertiary policy.
Unfortunately, none of that's going to help pay your visa bill this month.
