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

The next set of unemployment figures are due to be released next week - and speculation indicates they'll go up even higher.

Unemployment was sitting at 5.1 percent at the end of last year, according to the data.

NZ Herald business editor at large Liam Dann speculates ahead of next week's release.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And Liam Dan, the Herald's business editor at largest with me.
Liam Hellow, Hello, now I want to talk to you
about the unemployment data. But first have you seen what
Stats has just done?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yes, yes, I did. Kind of made me laugh. I
shouldn't should it?

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Did it make it? Why did it make you laugh
because it's such a basic error.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, yeah, it's kind of a basic ra So they
forgot to add the increase to car registration. So so
it turns out inflation was actually two point six percent
in the last quarter, not two point five. But the
bit that kind of made me laugh was but we're
just going to leave it there.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
You know, why are they doing that? Because why wouldn't
they want to update it to be accurate.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I don't know. Maybe maybe it's more complicated to unwind it. Obviously,
all the economists in the Reserve Bank and everyone are
going to see that, and they're going to you know,
they're going to know. I don't. I don't think it's
going to be hugely material to what the Reserve Bank's thinking.
But yeah, I'm not sure. Is it too hard to
change the website? That's I mean, the main thing is
just the headlines. That's number sits there on the website.

(00:59):
Maybe it's Yeah, so William, this is not.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Good for stats because do you remember at the end
of last year when they counted how many people had
lost their jobs in Wellington and they said it was
twenty thousand and it was like only ten percent of that.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, look they're under it must be under a fair
bit of pressure. While you were away too. In one
of the last you know, sort of conferences with Adrian
or you know, they it was Select Committee. In fact,
actually they the Reserve Bank, you know, kind of were
using it as an excuse and it looked like an excuse
for some of the forecasting that hadn't been great. But
they were saying, look, we're just not getting the numbers

(01:34):
we want from stats in z We're not confident in
the you know, those GDP numbers that there's huge revision la.
So you know, we take with a grain of salt
from the Reserve Bank under under pressure to Select Committee.
But you know, they were arguing that that it needed
to be better resourced. I wonder whether it's resourcing or prioritization.

(01:56):
Obviously the government's got no money to resource it, but
need to and have said that they maybe need to
look at where they're focusing and what the numbers are
that really matter, because there's a whole bunch of other
numbers that, you know, kind of nice to have interesting
bits of Kiwi information that get counted that I just
I think we're going to need to get these basics, right.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, totally. So who puts out the unemployment numbers?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, there'll be stats, so it is it is nuanced stuff.
You know, you'll get. So we're talking about whether it
goes up to economists talking about where it goes up
from five point one to five point two or five
point three, so you know, the margin ever era again
is pretty pretty tight. Although you know, if it goes

(02:42):
up from five point one to five point three, that
that I think a quick count would be another six
thousand people out of work. So it's you know, it's
pretty real. You know, there's the current number on classified
as unemployed at the last count was one hundred and
fifty six thousand, so yeah, pretty significant.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
You're two, right, Liam Listen, Thanks very much, appreciate it,
Liam Dan, the Herald's Business editor at large.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
For more from Heather Duplessy, Allen Drive listen live to
news Talks a b from four pm weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio