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Nick Tuffley: ASB chief economist on the unemployment rate falling to 5.3% · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: So unemployment came in five point three percent for quarter one.
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  Speaker 2: That was down from five point four percent quarter four
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  Speaker 2: to twenty twenty five, still to feel the full impact
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  Speaker 2: of the water course that it did include a month
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  Speaker 2: of it. Youth unemployment is the one you want to watch.
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  Speaker 2: That's up fourteen point four percent from thirteen point three.
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  Speaker 2: Wage growth also out of five year low two percent.
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  Speaker 2: Nick Tuffley, Asbchief Economist.
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  Speaker 3: Nick, good morning, Good morning.
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  Speaker 2: Worst is yet to come on jobs.
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  Speaker 3: Well, we do think we'll see a bit of a
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  Speaker 3: heckup in hiring through the middle parts of this year,
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  Speaker 3: but we've we've got a view that employment will be
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  Speaker 3: sort of fairly flat rather than something catastrophic. Well, we'll
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  Speaker 3: obviously have to wait and see, but the next quarter
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  Speaker 3: or two. So where we are now and over the
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  Speaker 3: next few months is sort of more of the danger
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  Speaker 3: zone because that's where we're in, that time where people
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  Speaker 3: are adjusting their spending habits and being more cautious and
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  Speaker 3: businesses are sort offering or reconsidered decisions or just huntering
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  Speaker 3: down to wait and see for a little bit.
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  Speaker 2: The young people who are not in work, not training,
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  Speaker 2: all that good stuff, the number going up. Is this
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  Speaker 2: normally what happens when there is problems with employment and
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  Speaker 2: it's the young ones who have the most trouble or
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  Speaker 2: is there something more going on here?
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  Speaker 3: Well, unfortunately, it's the pattern that we often see because
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  Speaker 3: your younger people are people who have less experience, if
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  Speaker 3: they're coming out of say school or university into a
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  Speaker 3: market where hiring is pretty cautious, and that's the sort
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  Speaker 3: of environment we've been in for several years. Unfortunately, it's
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  Speaker 3: tough getting that first job that gets you on that
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  Speaker 3: employment ladder. So unfortunately, this is a pattern that we
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  Speaker 3: do tend to see.
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  Speaker 2: How long before we see wages start toupace inflation again, Well.
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  Speaker 3: At this point, we expect wages are going to be
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  Speaker 3: sort of pretty pretty muted really, so we don't really
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  Speaker 3: see wage growth sort of gathering a lot of steam
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  Speaker 3: and being too much of an inflation problem. So we
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  Speaker 3: expect that wages are going to remain that the growth
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  Speaker 3: of them go remains sort of fairly steering sort of
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  Speaker 3: roughly where it is. So, look, we're not in the
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  Speaker 3: environment we were in a few years ago, where because
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  Speaker 3: you had super low unemployment, employees scrambling to find people
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  Speaker 3: and paying huge wage increases even though there wasn't any
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  Speaker 3: productivity there that caused quite a bit of inflation. This
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  Speaker 3: time around, we're not so likely to have that problem,
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  Speaker 3: even though inflation is pretty high, but means that we're
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  Speaker 3: not getting that compensation. So we speak in their pay
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  Speaker 3: packets for these sort of added fuel costs and some
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  Speaker 3: of the other costs.
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  Speaker 2: Increases of the face giving with one take s with
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  Speaker 2: the other, doesn't it, Nick, Appreciate your time, Nick Tuffley
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  Speaker 2: a speechif economists you're on News Talks heb.
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