New Zealand Unemployment Rate
The share of the labour force that wants a job and is actively looking, but can't find one.
5.6%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full New Zealand economy18 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Checked hourly against official sources.Unemployment Rate
Q1 1986 to Q2 2026
Source: OECD infra-annual labour statistics (DF_IALFS_UNE_M) · Stats NZ's Household Labour Force Survey, unemployment rate, 15 and over, seasonally adjusted, quarterly.
New Zealand Unemployment Rate in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In New Zealand, the unemployment rate rose by 0.4pp over the year to Q2 2026, from 5.2% in Q2 2025.
It is the highest reading since Q3 2015.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 3.2% in Q4 2021 to 5.6% in Q2 2026.
Its average since Q1 1986 is 5.7%, and the latest reading is below that.
New Zealand is 18th of 36 countries in our Unemployment Rate by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- OECD
- Series
- infra-annual
- Frequency
- Quarterly
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Seasonally adjusted
- Latest observation
- Q2 2026
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
New Zealand's labour force survey is quarterly, so this updates four times a year.
Data refreshed 2026-10-07. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More New Zealand indicators
Latest readings. Open any one for its full history.
Rankings
See every country we track, side by side.