Wages in New Zealand are going up. The Trade Me jobs report tells us that average wages have gone up in every part of the country. In the past year, 15 job areas saw their highest ever average wages.
The national average wage has gone up by 8% from the same time last year. This means people are earning $5,500 more than they did last year. Matt Tolich, who works at Trade Me, said this is good news because prices have gone up by about 6%. So, people have a bit more money to spend.
Wages have gone up the most in Wellington. After Wellington, the areas with the biggest wage increases are Southland, Otago, Canterbury, and Marlborough. All these areas saw wages go up by 9% to 10% from last year.
Now, more areas in New Zealand have average wages of more than $70,000. These areas include Bay of Plenty, Canterbury, Gisborne, Marlborough, Otago, Southland, and Taranaki.
The job area where wages went up the most is healthcare. Wages there went up by 10%. Other job areas that saw big wage increases are trades and services, manufacturing and operations, education, and hospitality and tourism.
But the report also has some less good news. The number of job adverts has gone down by 7.9% in the past three months. At the same time, more people are looking for jobs. In fact, twice as many people are applying for jobs now than at the same time last year.
Matt Tolich also spoke about this. He said that there are 88% more job applications now than last year. This is the biggest increase since 2018. He thinks this is because there will be an election soon. Many companies are waiting to see what happens in the election before they hire new people. This has happened before. Since 2009, companies have often waited until after the election to hire people. But Mr. Tolich is hopeful. He thinks there will be more job adverts in November and after the New Year.
