Jobless figure rises 3000

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 2

Jobless figure rises 3000

PA Wellington Nearly 3000 more people were registered unemployed in December compared with November, according to Labour Department figures yesterday. The figures show that at the end of December there were 54,085 job seekers, excluding vacation workers, registered unemployed. This represented 4.1 per cent of the estimated labour force and was an increase of 2982 over the figure at the end of November. But it was a drop 2336 on the December, 1984, figure. The latest figure in-

eluded 4641 schoolleavers, a rise of 1581 on the previous month.

In addition, there were 8655 tertiary students registered as seeking vacation work, bringing the total of all registered job seekers to 62,740, compared with 60,682 for the previous month. Of those registered unemployed, 18,034 were engaged on partly subsidised employment assistance programmes (up 5372 on November) and 16,054 were engaged on fully subsidised employment assistance and training programmes (down 649). There were significant changes in the number of registered unemployed in

Invercargill (down 421), Napier (down 191), Christchurch (up 659), Auckland (up 567), Rotorua (up 334), Whangarei (up 240), New Plymouth (up 213) and Wellington (up 210). Registered unemployed, excluding vacation workers at the end of December (last month’s figures in brackets) included: Wellington 2826 (2616) 2.8 per cent of the labour force; Blenheim 580 (561) 4.2 per cent; Nelson 1176 (1118) 4.5 per cent; Greymouth 780 (707) 5.8 per cent; Christchurch 6564 (5905) 4.3 per cent; Timaru 1226 (1170) 5.3 per cent.