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- Employment sector confidence back to post-Covid lows.
- Westpac McDermott-Miller survey sinks deeper into pessimism in March quarter.
- Sentiment soured by job security, fewer jobs on offer, slowing wages.
- But unemployment may be close to peaking.
Labour market pessimism has deepened as workers worry about holding to their job, the difficulty in finding jobs, and slowing wage growth.
The Westpac-McDermott Miller employment survey shows overall confidence fell 3.3 points to 88.3 in the three months ended March, a level last seen post-Covid in 2020. A level below 100 is pessimism.
Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said respondents believed it is harder to find a job, and the slight improvement that occurred at the end of last year faded.
"While job availability remains soft, this measure is still broadly in line with the current unemployment rate of 5.1 percent. This supports our view that the rate of unemployment rate is nearing its peak for this cycle."
Economists' forecasts point to unemployment peaking at around 5.3 percent in the middle of the year, before gradually falling going into next year.
Gordon said employment confidence fell in four of 11 regions, but Auckland, the country's biggest jobs market, was one of them.
Elsewhere regions with intensive farming industries fared and felt better than urban areas.
"A record high farmgate milk price for this season, and improving export prices for beef and lamb, are providing a boost to incomes in these regions."
There was little difference in the pessimism levels between public and private sector workers, with around six in ten saying that jobs are currently hard to get.
Gordon said recent surveys have shown businesses looking to hire but little sign of that showing up in the number of jobs ads, while some businesses held on to staff despite a downturn in activity because of previous difficulty in filling jobs.
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