Job losses tipped to continue for years

New employment data shows the substantial unemployment blow suffered during lockdown and then a recovery – but there is a warning job losses could continue for years.

Stats NZ has released a new employment indicator series using payday filing data from Inland Revenue.

This measure shows that in the week before the alert level 4 lockdown began and nonessential businesses closed, there were over 2.216 million paid jobs.

This fell to 2.108 million in the last week of level 4, before rising back to almost 2.199 million jobs in the week ending May 17.

‘‘While there are some quality issues with the data, this new series shows a week-on-week decrease in the number of paid jobs during . . . lockdown and then an immediate increase again as restrictions were eased,’’ senior manager Peter Dolan said.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said it showed the loss of about 6 per cent of all jobs in level 4 lockdown, before a recovery to normal levels. The data hinted at more weakness in June, but it was too soon to be confident of that trend, he said.

Eaqub said the lockdown was likely to have been the sharpest employment blow.

‘‘We might see another 100,000 job losses – but they won’t be over two months, they are likely to be over two years.’’

Just over 43,000 people have signed up to Jobseeker Support since March 20. In the week of June 5, 837 were added.

Because the payday filing has only been available since April last year, economist Brad Olsen said it was too soon to draw any real insight from the information.

There had been a significant dip over December and January, too, Olsen said.

‘‘The numbers are highly volatile, and StatsNZ themselves note the figures are experimental.’’