New Zealand’s unemployment rate stood at 5.1% in the December 2024 quarter, up from 4.8% in the September quarter and up from 4.0% in the December 2023 quarter, according to research from Statistics New Zealand.

Annually, unemployment rose by 33,000 to 156,000, as measured by the Household Labour Force Survey.

“Unemployment has been increasing since late 2022. The unemployment rate in the December 2024 quarter was the highest it’s been since the September 2020 quarter, when it was 5.2%,” labour market spokesperson Deb Brunning said in a press release.

For men, the unemployment rate was 4.9%, compared with 4.7% last quarter and 3.7% from December 2023. For women, the unemployment rate was 5.2%, compared with 5.0% last quarter and 4.3% in December 2023.

The country’s employment rate stood at 67.4%, down from 67.7% (revised) in the September quarter and down 1.7% from December 2023.

At the same time, the labour force participation rate stood at 71.0%, down 0.2% on the quarter and down 0.9% from the same period a year ago.

In the year to the December 2024 quarter, all salary and wage rates (including overtime), as measured by the labour cost index (LCI), increased by 3.3%. This compares with 3.8% in the year to the September 2024 quarter.

Average ordinary time hourly earnings in the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) rose 4.2% to NZD 42.57 (USD 24.23) in the year to the December 2024 quarter.

This is a slight increase from the annual wage growth of 3.9% in the year to the September 2024 quarter and a decrease from 6.9% in the year to the December 2023 quarter.