Alan McDonald: EMA Head of Advocacy, Finance and Strategy on unemployment

New Zealand's economic recovery could be more of a crawl, or a climb, than a bounce. 

The job market remains tough, with unemployment now at a ten-year high. 

EMA Head of Advocacy Alan McDonald told Ryan Bridge it's going to take a while for improved conditions and Government policy changes to flow through to the job market. 

ASB Senior Economist Mark Smith says while jobs are being created, we're still about 30-thousand jobs shy of where we were three years ago. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Unemployment up to a ten year high five point four percent,
up from five point three percent. Under usualization also climbing,
now sitting at a five year high thirteen percent. Alan
McDonald is with the head of Advocacy, Finance and Strategy
at the AMA joining US this morning. Ellen, Good morning.
What are your members seeing to you know, are they hiring?
Are they sort of holding? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Probably holding, I think is the answer at the moment, Ryan,
everybody wants everything to get better, and some of the
indicators are there, but I think they want to see
a few months or quarters strung together before they follow
through on some of those intentions to invest into hire.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
This is hard because it's checking and egg stuff. People
don't want to spend until they know the unemployment rates
coming down, but businesses don't want to hire until they
know people are going to spend.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, there's a bit of background to those numbers because
more people are looking, so that counts. But also you
get a little bump towards the end of the year
as people leave school and universities and things like that too.
But some of the underlying more positive stuff says that
the hiring intentions are there in both the sort of
performance of manufacturing and Performance of Services index and their

(01:12):
long run ones. So we pay a lot of attention
to those, but I think you know that the recovery
has been coming. The recovery has been coming. Could we
wait and see some really solid evidence before we follow
through on some of those intentions?

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Do you think one of the big I was listening
to an economist yesterday, one of the big problems is
that we had a sort of a false dawn, false
start last year. And you know, if this was if
we'd come straight out of a recession and this was
the start of it, then perhaps we would be more confident.
But because we got burnt last time, we're a bit
gun show.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, I think there's a fair bit of that, and
even going back beyond last year, but I think if
you remember at the start of last year, it was
going to be thrive in twenty five and it became
survived in twenty five and the reality is a lot
of businesses died in twenty five. So yeah, that's what's
driving some of that caution.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
I think, is there anything that you, as the UMA
want done now tomorrow that would help get us out
of it?

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I don't think there's any sort of magic wave you
want in a way we go kind of approach. I
think a lot of the stuff we're seeing from some
of the policy things, they're getting things out of the way,
They take time, and so when you get the cumulative
effect of all of those things coming through, then it's
not going to be a hockey stick, but I think
we'll start to see that slide up into recovery.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
If you like, we've just got to do the hard
yards and tough it out. Alan, appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's a bit of a grind.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Appreciate your time as always, Ellen, Alan McDonald's EMA head
of Edivacy, Finance and Strategy.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
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