Job losses lead to fresh start

Almost 50,000 people were made redundant in the first half of this year, but the number on the dole increased by only 20,000.

Statistics New Zealand's household labour force survey shows that 48,400 people, or 2.7 per cent of wage and salary earners, were "laid off, dismissed or made redundant" in the six months to June.

This was the highest percentage laid off since 1999.

But it was only a fraction of the layoffs in the last big recession almost 20 years ago, which peaked at 110,200, or 9.4 per cent of wage and salary earners, in the last half of 1991.

And the numbers on the unemployment benefit rose only from 30,508 at the end of last year to 50,855 at the end of June, suggesting that a majority of those made redundant found new jobs.

Numbers on the benefit reached 60,660 at the end of September, but the rate of increase slowed from about 1000 a week from April to August to less than 400 a week last month.

Redundancy figures for the September quarter will not be issued until next month, but Work and Income data on workplaces where it has provided redundancy support indicates a slowdown in redundancies in the past three months.

The agency gave redundancy support to 219 workplaces involving 3485 redundancies in the three months to March, and to 225 workplaces affecting 3448 people in the June quarter.

The number of workplaces dropped to 162 in the September quarter and affected employees halved to 1683.