Will’s Word: Are more Kiwis choosing part-time work or is that all that’s left?

New job statistics just dropped and they're kind of a mixed bag. Unemployment's holding steady at 5.1 per cent, better than expected for sure, but dig a little deeper and the picture gets a wee bit fuzzier.

Full-time jobs down 45,000 over the past year, part-time jobs up 25,000. That is quite a shift, isn't it? Around one in five people now work part-time. For women, it's even more, nearly one in three.

What's going on? Are more of us actually choosing part-time for the flexibility, or are we just taking what we can get? Maybe it's a bit of both. For some, obviously part-time means balance, more time for study, family, just life.

I'd get that if you just wanted to live life more, particularly after the past few years we've had - think Covid. I totally get it. The job market, though, is still shaky. Businesses aren't hiring like they used to.

Wage growth, as has been well highlighted in the stats out yesterday, is slowing and underutilisation, people who want more work but can't find it. Here's the real kicker for our community: unemployment for Māori and Pacific people continues to rise fast, close to 10 per cent.

That's nearly double the national rate and what frustrates me about media coverage yesterday, was there was a quiet celebration that ‘yay, unemployment has not shifted’, in the sense of getting worse and that's good.

I don't want to diminish that, but the real story out of yesterday's figures is that unemployment for Māori and Pacific people is close to 10 per cent. Perhaps while part-time work might be working for some, the most obvious sign from the figures out yesterday is that we have a labour market that's just not delivering for Māori and Pacific people.

Something's changing, for better or worse? That's the question.

Wills Word.

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