What is the unemployment rate?
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.6% (Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, Jun 2026 qtr).
Updated
The unemployment rate and number of unemployed people from the Household Labour Force Survey, seasonally adjusted, quarterly from 1986.
Survey estimates with sampling error; quarter-to-quarter moves of a few tenths of a point may not be significant. 'Unemployed' means without a job, available and actively seeking work; it is not the same as receiving a benefit.
Employment, pay and benefit figures cover different groups. Average hourly earnings summarise paid work, while unemployment uses the labour force definition and benefit counts use eligibility rules. Read those definitions before comparing the measures.
Read the period beside each number before comparing it with another figure. A monthly observation, a quarterly result and a financial year cover different spans of time. The latest release can also revise earlier observations. The chart and downloads keep the published periods so you can check which figures are being compared. A change in unemployment describes what happened during that period; it does not by itself explain why it happened or identify the effect of a government policy. Definitions and coverage matter as much as the size of a change.
Unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) was 5.2% in Jun 2025 qtr, a year earlier.
The earliest observation on the same basis was 4.2% in Mar 1986 qtr.
Unemployment: definitions
The unemployment rate and number of unemployed people from the Household Labour Force Survey, seasonally adjusted, quarterly from 1986.
- Survey estimates with sampling error; quarter-to-quarter moves of a few tenths of a point may not be significant.
- 'Unemployed' means without a job, available and actively seeking work; it is not the same as receiving a benefit.
Show the figures
| Period | Unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) (%) |
|---|---|
| Jun 2026 qtr | 5.6% |
| Mar 2026 qtr | 5.4% |
| Dec 2025 qtr | 5.4% |
| Sep 2025 qtr | 5.3% |
| Jun 2025 qtr | 5.2% |
| Mar 2025 qtr | 5.2% |
| Dec 2024 qtr | 5.1% |
| Sep 2024 qtr | 4.9% |
| Jun 2024 qtr | 4.7% |
| Mar 2024 qtr | 4.4% |
| Dec 2023 qtr | 4.0% |
| Sep 2023 qtr | 3.9% |
| Jun 2023 qtr | 3.7% |
| Mar 2023 qtr | 3.5% |
| Dec 2022 qtr | 3.4% |
| Sep 2022 qtr | 3.3% |
| Jun 2022 qtr | 3.3% |
| Mar 2022 qtr | 3.3% |
| Dec 2021 qtr | 3.2% |
| Sep 2021 qtr | 3.3% |
Quarters, labelled by their final month. Source: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa. Lines break at basis changes and missing periods.
Unemployment: questions for your AI
Download the data, attach it in your assistant, then paste the prompt.
The attached CSV is Unemployment, from Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa. Answer: What is the unemployment rate? Name the unit and period. Use only directly supported observations. Definitions: The unemployment rate and number of unemployed people from the Household Labour Force Survey, seasonally adjusted, quarterly from 1986. Limits: Survey estimates with sampling error; quarter-to-quarter moves of a few tenths of a point may not be significant. 'Unemployed' means without a job, available and actively seeking work; it is not the same as receiving a benefit.
More questions about unemployment
Other questions this topic can answer directly.
Unemployment: sources
The source publication, licence and snapshot used to build this page.
- Organisation
- Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, Household Labour Force Survey
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). This work is based on Stats NZ's data which are licensed by Stats NZ for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
- Reuse limits
- Photos, graphics and logos are excluded. Stats NZ logos and government emblems must not be used.
- Snapshot
- data/raw/statsnz-hlfs/2026-10-10_ea821e39d2b7.csv
- SHA256
- ea821e39d2b778d1b34e17a4eb81cb3e6c9748a395580b049f178864c558e540
- Retrieved
- 10 October 2026