New Zealand had 2.34 million filled jobs in July 2026, up 18,033 on July 2025, according to the monthly employment indicators Stats NZ released on Friday 28 August. That is a rise of 0.8 percent over the year, and on the seasonally adjusted measure it was the biggest single month of job growth since November 2025.
Then you look at where the jobs came from, and the recovery gets very narrow indeed.
Health care and social assistance added 6,581 jobs over the year. Public administration and safety added 6,418. Education and training added 2,630. Between them those three industries account for 15,629 jobs. The nineteen industries Stats NZ codes added 18,026 jobs in total, so health, the public sector and education supplied 87 percent of the country’s job growth. The other sixteen industries, which employ roughly three quarters of the workforce, supplied the remaining 13 percent.
Which industries grew and which shrank
Eight of the nineteen industries had fewer filled jobs in July 2026 than a year earlier. The largest fall was in professional, scientific and technical services, down 2,079 jobs or 1.1 percent, which covers accountants, engineers, lawyers, architects and consultants. Rental, hiring and real estate services lost 612 jobs, information media and telecommunications lost 500, and manufacturing, retail trade, wholesale trade, financial and insurance services and the catch-all other services category all finished the year slightly smaller than they started it.
Outside the big three, the growth that did happen was modest. Construction added 1,810 jobs, a rise of 0.9 percent, which is a genuine turn after two bad years but still leaves the industry well short of where it was. Administrative and support services added 1,806. Agriculture, forestry and fishing added 1,427, or 1.5 percent, off the back of strong dairy and meat returns. Electricity, gas, water and waste services added 772 jobs, a 3.2 percent rise on a small base, and mining added 266.
The public administration and safety number deserves a word of explanation, because it is not the same thing as the core public service. That industry category takes in central and local government administration, defence, police, corrections, fire services and the courts. Central government departments are only part of it, and headcount in the core public service is counted separately by the Public Service Commission. You can see how that narrower measure has moved since 1913 in our public service numbers tool. What the employment indicators show is the whole state and local government payroll, and that payroll grew 4.0 percent over the year while the private economy barely moved.
Canterbury is doing the heavy lifting
The regional split is the most striking part of the release. Canterbury added 6,825 filled jobs over the year, a rise of 2.2 percent. Auckland added 4,427, a rise of 0.6 percent. Canterbury has about 320,000 filled jobs and Auckland has about 792,000, so a region with 14 percent of the country’s jobs delivered 38 percent of the country’s job growth, and did it while out-adding a labour market two and a half times its size.
Waikato added 3,330 jobs and Otago 1,710, both up about 1.5 percent. Southland added 937 and Manawatu-Whanganui 1,249. Four regions went backwards. Northland lost 1,526 jobs, a fall of 2.1 percent and by far the worst result in the country. Taranaki lost 137, Gisborne 52 and Hawke’s Bay 40. Wellington was almost exactly flat, adding 129 jobs across a labour market of 252,000.
By age, the gains were concentrated in the middle and at the top. Filled jobs held by 35 to 39 year olds rose 3.2 percent, by 40 to 44 year olds 2.6 percent, and by people aged 65 and over 4.1 percent. Jobs held by 30 to 34 year olds fell 1.8 percent and jobs held by 15 to 19 year olds fell 2.1 percent. Some of that is simply people ageing from one five-year band into the next, so the age figures should be read with care, but the weakness at the young end lines up with what the household survey has been showing. Women gained 7,959 jobs over the year and men gained 3,819, which is consistent with the growth being concentrated in health, education and public administration.
Still short of the 2023 peak
Seasonally adjusted filled jobs peaked at 2,395,596 in October 2023. In July 2026 the same measure sat at 2,357,566. That is 38,030 jobs short, or 1.6 percent, nearly three years on. The low point was October 2025 at 2,337,060, so the labour market has clawed back about 20,500 jobs in nine months. At that pace it would take another year and a half to get back to where it was, and the population has grown in the meantime.
That is why the unemployment rate can keep climbing while filled jobs rise. Unemployment reached 5.6 percent in the June quarter, the highest in more than a decade, with 166,500 people out of work, as we reported earlier this month. Filled jobs count positions filled through payday filing. The unemployment rate comes from a household survey and depends on how many people are looking. Jobs can grow and unemployment can still rise if the number of people wanting work grows faster.
Pay per job is going backwards in real terms
Total gross earnings on an accrual basis came to $16.5 billion in July 2026, up $607 million or 3.8 percent on July 2025. Because the number of filled jobs rose 0.8 percent over the same period, average gross earnings per filled job rose about 3.0 percent, from roughly $6,843 a month to roughly $7,049.
Annual inflation was 4.1 percent in the June 2026 quarter, driven largely by fuel. So average earnings per filled job went backwards by roughly a percent in real terms over the year. That figure is an average across every job in the country and it moves with the mix of hours and industries as well as with pay rates, so it is not a measure of what any individual worker is earning. It does tell you that the total wage bill is not keeping pace with prices.
Stats NZ also flagged a data quality issue in this release, noting that it had “identified cases where payroll remediation payments resulted in overestimates in the filled job counts at the lower aggregate levels”. It says the effect on the national totals and long-term trends is minimal.
What it means for Wednesday
The services sector is the part of the economy that has to start hiring for unemployment to fall, and it is only inching along. The BNZ and BusinessNZ performance of services index came in at 50.6 in July, barely above the 50.0 mark that separates expansion from contraction, and its employment sub-index was 48.5, meaning services firms were still shedding staff. BNZ senior economist Doug Steel said of the July reading, “The positive take is that this represents progress, with the past two months having shown better readings than for most of the past three years”, while noting the index sits only just above breakeven. BusinessNZ chief executive Katherine Rich, commenting on the same survey, said, “Employment remains the sector’s soft spot, sitting at 48.5 alongside supplier deliveries, which tells us firms are still cautious about committing to new hires”. Both were reported by interest.co.nz on 17 August.
The Reserve Bank reviews the official cash rate on Wednesday 2 September, with the rate currently at 2.50 percent and every big bank economist picking a rise to 2.75 percent to deal with fuel-driven inflation. A labour market that is adding jobs almost entirely through the health, education and government payroll, while professional services and manufacturing keep shrinking, is not the kind of recovery that copes easily with dearer money. The next employment indicators, for August, are due on 28 September.
Is the jobs recovery reaching your industry or your part of the country, or does it look like a government payroll story from where you are standing? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply