Latest / Best of Business / Michael Gordon: Westpac senior economist on the declining confidence in the labour market

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Michael Gordon: Westpac senior economist on the declining confidence in the labour market · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: People around the country feeling pretty pessimistic about their chances
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  Speaker 2: of getting a job. The wes Pac McDermott Miller Employment
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  Speaker 2: Confidence Index, which is where you go out and ask
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  Speaker 2: people how are you feeling about your job prospects, it's
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  Speaker 2: dropped to eighty eight point three. That is the lowest
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  Speaker 2: level since September twenty twenty, which was after the lockdowns,
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  Speaker 2: So that's not a great stat Michael Gordon's Westpac Senior
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  Speaker 2: Economsty's with me now, Hi, Michael, Good happening, Well, things
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  Speaker 2: looking So why are people feeling so grim?
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  Speaker 3: Well? I think it's the reality of jobs are still
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  Speaker 3: pretty hard to come by. We hear from certainly from
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  Speaker 3: businesses that while they're some of there having trouble fillings
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  Speaker 3: more specialist roles, but they're tending to find that there's
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  Speaker 3: generally a lot of people available, and some of them
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  Speaker 3: also finding themselves a bit overstaffed having held on to
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  Speaker 3: people through the downturn. So there's just not a lot
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  Speaker 3: being advertised at the moment, and that's rarely been the
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  Speaker 3: biggest driver of that perception that things are pretty tough
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  Speaker 3: in the jobs market at the moment.
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  Speaker 2: Depends where you live, though, doesn't it. I mean, you
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  Speaker 2: look at some of the regions and actually things are
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  Speaker 2: looking quite good.
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  Speaker 3: It varies a bit, I think, probably more so in
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  Speaker 3: terms of earnings and the job opportunities. Is what's coming
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  Speaker 3: through in our survey whither I will obviously the exceptions.
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  Speaker 3: I think there's been stories about quite a bit of
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  Speaker 3: activity around reefs and and parts of the West Coast
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  Speaker 3: as well, But generally we sort of found that there's
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  Speaker 3: sort of a bit more variation in it's sort of
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  Speaker 3: more the farming areas where they're seeing some pretty decent
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  Speaker 3: gains from high dairy and beef prices. Is not necessarily
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  Speaker 3: flowing out into spending in the wider regions yet, but
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  Speaker 3: certainly those more directly linked to it are finding things
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  Speaker 3: a bit better than those of us in the cities.
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  Speaker 2: Michael, When is it going to get worse? When does
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  Speaker 2: it end? You know, when does the confidence return?
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  Speaker 3: The labor market tends to be one of the slower
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  Speaker 3: things to turn with the cycle. So even if you
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  Speaker 3: consider those GDP figures we had last week, so we've
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  Speaker 3: got some growth out of it. It's probably the underlying
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  Speaker 3: picture is it's not really out stripping population growth at
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  Speaker 3: the moment, so it'll take a bit more than what
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  Speaker 3: we've seen to date to sort of really actually be
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  Speaker 3: able to start to generate some jobs. And as a
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  Speaker 3: result of that, we're expecting the unemployment rate is probably
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  Speaker 3: going to go a bit higher this year before it peaks.
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  Speaker 3: We're not talking, you know, really high peaks compared to
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  Speaker 3: what we've seen in some past cycles, but you know,
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  Speaker 3: undoubtedly it's you know, it's quite a bit different from
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  Speaker 3: where we were a couple of years ago when there
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  Speaker 3: was very you know, we're all very low rates of unemployment.
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  Speaker 2: All right, Michael, thanks so much for your analysis. Michael Gordon,
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  Speaker 2: Westpac Senior Economist.
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