The number of unemployed people has dropped by 16,000, and the numbers in employment has grown by 17,000. According to the figures, Maori employed have increased by 25,000 over the last year while the number of unemployed decreased by 6,000. These figures do not take into account the pending job losses from the Mataura Paper Mill and the Flemings Flour Mill. The participation rate has a big impact on how the official unemployment rate is constructed. Although the number of people employed has fallen, the drop in numbers has been more than offset by the contraction of the overall labour force.
Economic commentators can really only guess at the reasons.
The Household Labour Force Survey is derived from a large sample of 15,000 households representing about 30,000 people. NZ says we can expect these levels of sampling errors, because the survey is not based a census of the total NZ population. We have lift-off. This is unprecedented in a time of strong economic growth, and can only be linked to employers being fearful of employing staff under this government's anti-employment agenda. The rate of official unemployment has only fallen because people are dropping out of the work force altogether.