The incredibly tight labour market has been a key feature of the New Zealand economy over the last two years. Strong demand for goods and services has coincided with the border closures to drive the unemployment rate down as far as 3.2%, its lowest level since the early 1980s.

This month Principal Economist Brad Olsen takes a closer look at Job Seeker Support benefit numbers, which spiked higher when COVID-19 hit and have not come back down as rapidly as the unemployment rate.

Senior Economist Nick Brunsdon looks at the latest population trends. The outflow of young Kiwis as the borders have reopened is sparking fears of a “brain drain”, similar to the loss of workers and skills that affected the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Health and Disability numbers make up a significant proportion of people on Job Seeker Support. Senior Economist Rob Heyes argues that a lot more work needs to be done to understand the challenges faced by these people, as well as enabling them to be better integrated into the labour market.

Our latest Quarterly Economic Monitor was recently published, and the mix of capacity constraints caused by a lack of workers and major cost pressures on household budgets is limiting economic growth around the regions.

And our Grocery Supplier Cost Index, which was launched this month, features in our Chart of the Month. The Index utilises data from Foodstuffs NZ, and it shows that rising supplier costs are playing an increasing part in rising grocery bills over the last year.