Westpac senior economist Felix Dulbruck believes unemployment will have fallen in the final three months of last year.
Statistics New Zealand will publish the labour cost index and quarterly employment survey on Tuesday, while the household labour force survey, which measures unemployment, is out on Thursday.
Unemployment hit a 13 year high of 7.3% in the September quarter, and Mr Dulbruck believes it will correct itself to 7% in the December quarter.
But he said the household labour force survey is volatile which is a statistical issue with sampling rather than a reflection of reality, so it's very hard to predict the true state of the labour market.
Mr Dulbruck said to some extent, job growth forecasts depend on which survey is taken into account.
An employer-based survey has shown jobs growing pretty solidly over the last year, but the household labour force survey has shown virtually no growth in jobs.
Mr Dulbruck said employers are still being quite cautious about hiring new personnel and although there has been a bit of growth in jobs, it has not been growing as strongly as the rest of the economy.
He said wage growth is relatively flat and contained for now, but that's not expected to last.
