http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10354535
The NZ Herald reports that unemployment in NZ has fallen to a 23 year low of 3.4% – the best in the developed world. The next lowest is South Korea with a rate of 4.1%.
This is really an impressive result, though analysis of the factors that have produced this situation has been conspicuously absent from the media. This is really what we need to know, especially when one considers that average NZ incomes are actually well below many other countries in the OECD and the current account deficit is phenomenonally high. One piece of information that I thought was pretty interesting – the last time the unemployment rate in NZ was this low was in 1982, during the wage and price freeze imposed by Robert Muldoon. And most would agree that they were actually pretty rough days for the NZ economy. So the current results can’t be viewed as unambiguously good.