23 Mar 2012

94,000 more jobs predicted over next two years

6:35 pm on 23 March 2012

The Labour Department expects the number of jobs to grow by about 94,000 over the next two years.

The department says it expects about 40,000 of those jobs to be created by March 2013 and another 54,000 by March 2014.

General manager of its labour and immigration research centre Vasantha Krishnan says much of the growth will be in skilled jobs but there were also expected to be more opportunities for lower skilled workers, with at least a third of the new jobs in that that category.

She says 30% of the job growth will be in Auckland and 28% in Canterbury.

Ms Krishnan told Evening Business on Checkpoint a lot of the jobs would be in private services such as retailing, wholesale, property and transport services as well as in the construction and utilities services.

She says construction work in the wake of the Canterbury earthquakes would be a bit driver of job growth.

The department expects unemployment to drop slowly to less than 6% in a year's time and then to 5.4% in 2014.

Official figures show the unemployment rate was 6.3% at the end of 2011.