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Speaker 1: People around the country feeling pretty pessimistic about their chances

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Speaker 1: of getting a job. The west Pac McDermot Miller Employment

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Speaker 1: Confidence Index, which is where you go out and ask

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Speaker 1: people how are you feeling about your job prospects, it's

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Speaker 1: dropped to eighty eight point three. That is the lowest

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Speaker 1: level since September twenty twenty, which was after the lockdowns,

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Speaker 1: So that's not a great stat Michael Gordon's Westpac senior

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Speaker 1: Econosty's with me now, Hi, Michael good Anoon. Well, things

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Speaker 1: looking so why a people feeling so grim?

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Speaker 2: Well? I think it's the reality of jobs are still

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Speaker 2: pretty hard to come by. We hear from certainly from

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Speaker 2: businesses that while they're some of them are having trouble

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Speaker 2: filling more specialist roles, but they're tending to find that

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Speaker 2: there's generally a lot of people available, and some of

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Speaker 2: them also finding themselves a bit overstaffed having held on

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Speaker 2: to people through the downturn. So there's just not a

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Speaker 2: lot being advertised at the moment, and that's really been

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Speaker 2: the biggest driver of that perception that things are pretty

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Speaker 2: tough in the jobs market at the moment.

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Speaker 1: Depends where you live, though, doesn't it I mean, you

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Speaker 1: look at some of the regions and actually things are

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Speaker 1: looking quite good.

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Speaker 2: It varies a bit, I think, probably more so in

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Speaker 2: terms of earnings and the job opportunities. Is what's coming

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Speaker 2: through in our survey. Whither I will obviously the exceptions.

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Speaker 2: I think there's been stories about quite a bit of

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Speaker 2: activity around recent and parts of the West Coast as well,

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Speaker 2: but generally were sort of found that there's sort of

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Speaker 2: a bit more variation in. It's sort of more the

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Speaker 2: farming areas where they're seeing some pretty decent gains from

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Speaker 2: high dairy and beef prices. Is not necessarily flowing out

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Speaker 2: into spending in the wider regions yet, but certainly those

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Speaker 2: more directly linked to it are finding things a bit

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Speaker 2: better than those of us in the cities.

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Speaker 1: Michael, When is it going to get worse? When does

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Speaker 1: it end? And and you know, when does the confidence return?

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Speaker 2: The labor market tends to be one of the slower

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Speaker 2: things to turn with the cycle. So even if you

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Speaker 2: consider those GDP figures we had last week, so we've

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Speaker 2: got some growth out of it, it's probably the underlying

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Speaker 2: picture is it's not really out stripping population growth at

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Speaker 2: the moment, so it'll take a bit more than what

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Speaker 2: we've seen to date to sort of really actually be

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Speaker 2: able to start to generate some jobs. And as a

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Speaker 2: result of that, we're expecting the unemployment rate is probably

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Speaker 2: going to go a bit higher this year before it peaks.

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Speaker 2: We're not talking, you know, really high peaks compared to

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Speaker 2: what we've seen in some past cycles, but you know,

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Speaker 2: undoubtedly it's you know, it's quite a bit different from

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Speaker 2: where we were a couple of years ago when there

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Speaker 2: was very you know, we're all very low rates of unemployment.

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Speaker 1: All right, Michael, thanks so much for your analysis. Michael Gordon,

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Speaker 1: Westpac Senior Economist. For more from Heather Duplessy Alan Drive,

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Speaker 1: listen live to News Talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays,

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