Latest / Best of Business / Liam Dann: NZ Herald business editor at large speculates about unemployment numbers ahead of next week's data

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Liam Dann: NZ Herald business editor at large speculates about unemployment numbers ahead of next week's data · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
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  Speaker 2: Liam Dan, the Herald's business editor at largest, with me.
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  Speaker 3: Liam.
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  Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Now I want to talk to you about
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  Speaker 2: the unemployment data. But first, have you seen what Stats
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  Speaker 2: has just done?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I did.
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  Speaker 3: Kind of made me laugh. I shouldn't should it?
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  Speaker 2: Did it make it? Why did it make you laugh
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  Speaker 2: because it's such a basic error.
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  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's kind of basic era. So they forgot
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  Speaker 3: to add the increase to car registration. So so it
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  Speaker 3: turns out inflation was actually two point six percent in
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  Speaker 3: the last quarter, not two point five. But the bit
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  Speaker 3: that kind of made me laugh was but we're just
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  Speaker 3: going to leave it there.
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  Speaker 2: You know, why are they doing that? Because why wouldn't
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  Speaker 2: they want to update it to be accurate.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe maybe it's more complicated to unwind it. Obviously,
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  Speaker 3: if all the economists in the Reserve Bank and everyone
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  Speaker 3: are going to see that, and they're going to you know,
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  Speaker 3: they're going to know. I don't. I don't think it's
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  Speaker 3: going to be hugely material to what the Reserve Bank's thinking.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm not sure is it too hard to
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  Speaker 3: change the website. That's I mean, the main thing is
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  Speaker 3: just the headlines. That's number sits there on the website.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe it's Yeah, So William, this is.
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  Speaker 2: Not good for stats because do you remember at the
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  Speaker 2: end of last year when they counted how many people
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  Speaker 2: had lost their jobs in Wellington and they said it
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  Speaker 2: was twenty thousand and it was like only ten percent
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  Speaker 2: of that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, look they're under it must be under a fair
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  Speaker 3: bit of pressure. While you were away too. In one
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  Speaker 3: of the last you know, sort of conferences with Adrian
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  Speaker 3: or you know, they it was Select Committee. In fact,
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  Speaker 3: actually they the Reserve Bank, you know, kind of were
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  Speaker 3: using it as an excuse and it looked like an
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  Speaker 3: excuse for some of the forecasting that hadn't been great.
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  Speaker 3: But they were saying, look, we're just not getting the
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  Speaker 3: numbers we want from Stats and Z we're not confident
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  Speaker 3: in the you know, those GDP numbers that there was
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  Speaker 3: huge revision lay. So you know, we take with a
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  Speaker 3: grain of salt from the Reserve Bank under under pressure
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  Speaker 3: to Select Committee. But you know, they were arguing that
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  Speaker 3: that it needed to be better resourced. I wonder whether
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  Speaker 3: it's resourcing or prioritization. Obviously the government's got no money
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  Speaker 3: to resource it, but they need to and have said
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  Speaker 3: that they maybe need to look at where they're focusing
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  Speaker 3: and what the numbers are that really matter, because there's
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  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of other numbers that, you know, kind
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  Speaker 3: of nice to have interesting bits of Kiwi information that
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  Speaker 3: get counted that I just I think we're going to
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  Speaker 3: need to get these basics, right.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. So who puts out the unemployment numbers?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, there'll be stats and it is it is nuanced stuff.
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  Speaker 3: You know, you'll get so we're talking about whether it
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  Speaker 3: goes up to economists talking about where it goes up
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  Speaker 3: from five point one to five point two or five
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  Speaker 3: point three, so you know, the margin every era again
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  Speaker 3: is pretty pretty tight. Although you know, if it goes
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  Speaker 3: up from five point one to five point three, that
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  Speaker 3: that I think a quick count would be another six
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  Speaker 3: thousand people out of work, So it's you know, it's
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  Speaker 3: pretty real. You know, there's a the current number on
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  Speaker 3: classified as unemployed at the last count was one hundred
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  Speaker 3: and fifty six thousand, so yeah, pretty significant.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah too, right, Liam Listen, Thanks very much, appreciate it,
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  Speaker 2: Liam Dan The Herald's Business editor at large.
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