This article has been translated from English to Gen Z Slang.
Yo, Kiwi land’s unemploment rate totally climbed to 5.4% in the December 2025 quarter, when it was like s’posed to stay chill at 5.3%, making peeps think the RBNZ's gonna keep chillin’ with the monetary easing, even though there were some low-key job gains of 0.5% quarter-to-quarter.📈
Main Deets
- Unemployment rate upped to 5.4% from 5.3% quarter-to-quarter, that’s a 0.3 percentage points glow up year-on-year
- Employment rate ticked up slightly to 66.7% from 66.6%, still kinda meh ‘cause it’s down 0.5 percentage points annually
- Underutilisation rate stayed on cruise mode at 13.0%, unchanged from last quarter
- Labour force participation had a glow-up to 70.5% from 70.3%, kinda making up for the weakness elsewhere
- Wage growth slowing down big time, with salary and wage rate rises cooling to 2.0% from 3.3% in December 2024
- Employed peeps went up a lil’ bit to 2.886 mil, that’s up 14k compared to last quarter
Employment wins were like mid. The 0.5% boost in jobs meant 14,000 extra gigs, taking the total employment to 2,886,000. But that’s just a 0.2% annual rise, not even close to keeping up with the squad growth, showing up how the job market's kinda sus when it comes to making more jobs. 💼
Check out these Stats NZ Labour Market Stats (December 2025 Quarter)
The tea is, the underutilisation rate, which counts not just unemployed peeps but those in unreliable gigs and missing from the workforce, stayed at an uncomfortable 13.0%, affecting 409,000 people. 😬
What's top-tier spooky for monetary policy watchdogs is how wage growth is sloooowing down. The Labour Cost Index (LCI) for all paychecks went up just 2.0% for the year, down from 3.3% in December 2024 and we haven't seen it this slow in like forever. That’s low-key struggling vibes compared to annual consumer price inflation of 3.1% for the same time, meaning peeps' real earnings are still kinda getting squashed. 😫
Market Vibes
NZD vs. Major Currencies: 5-min
Overlay of NZD vs. Major Currencies Chart Faster with TradingView
The NZ dollar basically ghosted after the job data came out, with traders tuning into the joblessness tick-up and snail-paced wage growth. 📉
NZD kinda plummeted versus AUD (-0.26%) as the chill RBNZ vibes didn’t match the RBA’s hype for rate hikes earlier this week. The Kiwi also took some Ls against EUR (-0.18%) and GBP (-0.22%) with ECB and BOE decisions looming, but managed a glow-up versus CHF (+0.03%) and JPY (+0.21%) a few hours after the new deets dropped, probs due to broader market shifts and counter currency flows. 🔄
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