How many unemployed are there? It’s anyone’s guess

It may be hard to get a clear picture before August of how badly the New Zealand workforce has been affected by Covid-19.

Stats NZ said changes in the way that New Zealanders were working would not immediately show up in the labour market statistics it provided.

Data for release next week will show the state of the labour market before the five-week level four lockdown. It said its August update would give a clearer picture.

‘‘Some people may be getting a wage subsidy but are not actually working because firms have been forced to shut temporarily,’’ labour market and household statistics senior manager Sean Broughton said.

‘‘Others in essential industries may have been working much longer hours than they typically would,’’ he said.

‘‘It will likely take some time to measure the full effects of the Covid-19 lockdown. The March 2020 quarter will mostly show how the labour market looked before Covid-19 hit.’’

Stats NZ said the lockdown had also limited its ability to collect data about the labour market.

Economist Brad Olsen, of Infometrics, said other indicators would help in the meantime.

‘‘The weekly benefit and wage subsidy numbers are a really important development, but they’re still a week old when they’re released,’’ he said.

‘‘We’ll also be looking closely at the monthly employment indicators and tax outturn data to see what’s happening to the income and employment flows, as well as a range of other data sets to examine.

‘‘However, getting a good understanding of what areas – both regions and industries – that are seeing job losses will be hard to pick for a while, with New Zealand simply not collecting, or not making available, these sort of details.’’

He said some people could drop out of the labour force, perhaps to study, and so might not be counted as unemployed.