North's jobless rate falls to 7.3pc

Imran Ali | Monday, October 3, 2011 16:00

Northland's unemployment rate has continued to fall, with chances of landing a job until the end of this year higher than the same period last year.

Jobs listed with Work and Income's northern offices at the end of last week showed 56 part-time and full-time opportunities in 74 positions across a range of sectors from retail, caregiving and labouring.

Carol Barnett, Work and Income regional labour market manager, said Northland's unemployment rate fell from 9.1 per cent in June 2010 to 7.3 per cent in June this year.

In terms of jobs by sectors as at September 9, restaurant service workers and labourers had the highest number of vacancies at 35 and 18 respectively, followed by customer service clerks at 15.

There were 10 job listings for corporate managers, nine for office clerks, eight for salespersons and agriculture and fishery workers, seven for tradespeople and five vacancies for drivers and mobile machine operators.

Ms Barnett said kumara planting season was about to start in Kaipara that usually employed up to 70 people for between 10 and 12 weeks.

Once planting was over, some labourers were kept for weeding while others returned for harvesting, she said.

Nine out of 10 participants in a Straight-to-Work forestry programme in Kaitaia signed employment contracts last week while the hospitality industry was starting to hire workers for the shoulder season, Ms Barnett said.

"Rugby World Cup is providing some people limited employment over the next eight weeks and there is demand for logging truck drivers for the forestry industry," she said.

Apata is employing workers for the avocado season in Whangarei, she said.

Although civil construction has started employing, the sector is absorbing people previously made redundant.

Mr Barnett said Work and Income had received at least five queries for possible funding over the past two weeks from beekeeping groups, especially Iwi.

"Jobs are slowly picking up. There is mixed business confidence, particularly in the hospitality and tourism sectors which usually starts around October but they started a little earlier this time because of the World Cup."

Ms Barnett said she was cautiously optimistic about Northland's job market, at least until the end of the year.

Unemployment rates also fell in Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne-Hawke's Bay and Southland.