The New Zealand economy likely contracted in the June quarter as demand weakened and businesses laid off staff, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) says.
A net 28% of firms in NZIER’s quarterly survey of business opinion (QSBO) reported a decline in trading activity during the past three months and 35% predicted conditions would worsen.
Christina Leung, the research firm’s deputy chief executive, said the survey data suggested there would be another quarter of economic contraction this year -- likely in the June quarter.
NZ’s gross domestic product increased 0.2% in the first three months of 2024, but the QSBO data released on Tuesday suggests the economy has not yet begun to recover.
A net 25% of firms reduced their headcount during the quarter, the highest proportion since the Global Financial Crisis in 2007, and another 10% expect to lay off staff next quarter.
This showed firms were “hunkering down in the face of weak demand,” Leung said.
Most firms now find both skilled and unskilled labour easy to find. This is a stark contrast from the pandemic era when there were severe shortages which helped drive the inflation spike.
During 2021 and 2022, a majority of firms reported the labour shortage was the biggest constraint on their trading activity. Now, a lack of sales is the limiting factor in activity for 61% of firms.
Leung said weak demand was driving a reduction in capacity pressures in the New Zealand economy, which would feed through to lower inflation.
“The easing in these indicators suggests higher interest rates are continue to gain traction in reining in inflation in the New Zealand economy”.
The firm has forecast inflation will be back in the 1% to 3% target band by the end of the year and return to the 2% Reserve Bank target midpoint in 12 months’ time.
Business confidence was weak across sectors but worst among building and construction firms. A net 65% of these firms expected conditions to worsen over the next three months and a net 34% had cut their prices during the past three months.
Across the entire survey, a net 23% of firms reported increasing prices during the quarter but that number has fallen dramatically from a net 70% a year ago. Profitability has come under further pressure, with 42% of firms reporting higher costs.
Many retailers have been unable to pass on these higher costs and a net 72% of these businesses reported reduced profitability. This is the situation the Reserve Bank has wanted to engineer through higher interest rates.
Leung said households would continue to pare back discretionary spending, and reject price increases where possible, as average mortgage rates peak and the labour market softens.
“We expect these factors will continue to weigh on consumer confidence and retail spending over the coming year,” she said.
58 Comments
Nah. Inflation hurts everyone, especially low income earners. Normal rates and HFL correctly targets the leveraged risk taker, and the bad business operator afraid to make change. The bigger the bubble the greater the fall. Every week this has more and more potential to be 1987 all over.
Agreed. Things are pretty grim in retail... and likely to be that way all year, but we'll survive.
Inflation is a much bigger killer for us in the medium to long term though. We're willing to absorb the pain now. It's not going to be pretty though, especially when the housing market finally capitulates. But it has to happen.
Nah. Inflation hurts everyone, especially low income earners. Normal rates and HFL correctly targets the leveraged risk taker, and the bad business operator afraid to make change.
Also usually at the expense of the worker, either via unemployment, or reduced earnings via reduced spending as a result from restrained lending. Just as a reminder, they're trying to reduce inflation by smashing the crap out of demand/jobs.
This is no surgical strike dude, arguably those already worse off, are even more worse off in a HFL environment. The whole system is interconnected.
This is a stark contrast from the pandemic era when there were severe shortages which helped drive the inflation spike.
This is untrue. Wages make up a small fraction of the costs in sectors where prices went up a lot. A 10% increase in staff costs would only add about 1% to the outgoings of our wholesale and retail sector combined, for example. Staff costs are basically irrelevant to insurance and finance prices. Etc etc. The only sector where passthrough from higher wages to prices looks relevant is in construction, although it was building supplies costs that drove construction prices high through 2021 (and lower costs are now enabling construction to reduce prices).
Couple of things maybe worth considering:
- You can't just factor in the wage bill of a business as the sole labour inflation element in their prices, but also every single supplier cost the business has. i.e., a businesses wages go up 10%, and then also their costs for things like power, raw materials, maintenance, etc, which have also had to go up due to the labour costs going up for all the suppliers. The end user/consumer is at the link of the chain, absorbing the cost increases for every entity that contributes to a final product - not just the labour cost increases for the retailer.
- Construction over COVID often ended up taking up to twice as long to get the same sort of result you'd get in 2019 or earlier. So while materials ended up increasing, labour costs went out the window. Not necessarily due to wage inflation (although this also rose due to labour shortages and increased demand), but lesser productive output.
Yes, all input costs compound through supply chains - imported goods and services, staff costs, credit costs, profit margins, energy, insurance etc. When you do a crude model that looks more widely you get something like this. The reason that wages gets singled out by economists is because they are programmed to focus on preventing workers gaining any bargaining power (a feature not a bug of monetary policy).
Over the next few years, more and more countries will introduce strategic reserves and other temporary price shock mitigation tools designed to prevent price shocks penetrating their price structure and causing 'inflation'. Meanwhile, RBNZ will still be sat in the stands using a hard stare to try and stop inflation scoring a try.
Yes, that's fair. And, yes the fuel tax and public transport subsidies demonstrably took the edge off CPI for a while. I would like to see central banks acknowledge that they don't have the toolkit for the job.
I don't think strategic reserves necessarily require borrowing. The US makes money on its strategic reserve - you subsidise on the way up and recoup on the downs, I guess like banks passing on rate rises quickly to borrowers and slowly to lenders!
Leung said weak demand was driving a reduction in capacity pressures in the New Zealand economy, which would feed through to lower inflation.
Nobody should be able to say this without being asked to explain exactly how having more people on the dole will reduce prices in a low-competition economy where the CPI is being kept high by sectors that are not sensitive to demand. Now look at the liquidations amongst companies in sectors that are demand sensitive - retail, restaurants, etc.
Exactly. The recession will have a marginal impact on prices,because businesses are closing or scaling back to adjust to lower demand rather than lowering prices. Why? Because, like us, they are paying out more in costs - interest, rates, insurance, energy, wages etc.
Chinese airlines recently selling $600 return flights to mainland China airports. It was with a stop over. But that is a longer flight than to the US at half
the best price of that sector. Chinese tourism must be dead. Those airlines must be surviving on credit and government subsidies.
A friend took his whole family home to the UK for a holiday a couple of months back. Chinese airline with stopover in China. Hainan Airlines I think it was. Would have cost him at least $14,000 in return airfares with anyone else. He did it with $10K using the Chinese airline and he was pretty pleased with the experience.
Many retailers have been unable to pass on these higher costs and a net 72% of these businesses reported reduced profitability. This is the situation the Reserve Bank has wanted to engineer through higher interest rates.
Yes, retail operating profit margins on aggregate have fallen back to pre-COVID levels (from 8% peak to 6%) but wholesale profit margins actually went up through late-2023 and early 2024! What's happening here of course is that cheaper import costs are enabling higher profits in our uncompetitive wholesale sector, whereas retailers are being screwed both ways. The consumer meanwhile is not seeing that much difference on price.
Where does this end? With wholesalers selling less stuff but maintaining their profits while retailers go to the wall at an increasing rate. Madness.
A lot of unsubstantiated claims here around inflation being pushed by lack of staff, when we did not see comparative increases in wages compared to inflation in the CPI.
Citations would be appropriate where making claims such as "This is a stark contrast from the pandemic era when there were severe shortages which helped drive the inflation spike.".
My understanding is that cost of fuel, shipping, insurance, building materials, and the spike in available cashflow from low interest rates and people selling houses at the peak and cashing out, coupled with not being able to travel thus spending their money within New Zealand rather than heading overseas had a stronger impact. I make these statements with the same level of reference as this article has made their claims, which should be a point you take on board for future articles.
I can't see how a lack of staff led to inflation nearly as much as any other factors I have listed above. Seems to be blaming employees wanting fair remuneration by proxy rather than an intellectually honest take.
But I would be keen to see your source to show me where my error of thought is.
Does New Zealand produce income statistics by age bracket? I have seen stats from the US which shows much of the post covid wage inflation concentrated in the under 25's age range. Due to mandated increases in the minimum wage. Those in the o'35 range had failed to keep up with inflation.
here's the change in real wages (inflation-adjusted) broken down by skill level, which isn't far off what you're after. As you can see, wages have fallen in real terms but minimum wage has helped at the lower end.
I predominantly work with SME's so the above is of no surprise to me. Since March the requests to reduce loan repayments/extend terms etc have gone through the roof. It's beginning to mirror what we experienced post the GFC. Not a new observation but those with debt seem to be shouldering an unfair portion of the "inflation busting load".
If the current time line for OCR reductions is adhered to then I think things are going to get rather dire. The other point is a lot of people have now had a serious "fright" so I don't believe OCR reductions will be in anyway stimulatory for quite some time.
It will be interesting to see.
My suspicion is that the property market is just waiting for any drop in rates to explode higher again, dragging inflation with it. I haven't witnessed any attitude changes at all, anecdotally. Most seem to assume that high rates are temporary, they'll be dropped again soon and then we'll be back to the races.
I do not want to see any reduction in interest rates unless there are measures to target rate relief at productive enterprise rather than property. I've seen my generation (early millennial) get absolutely crushed by the property situation. In terms of how it's damaged our long-term financial position and ability to set ourselves up, this mild recession/low-growth period does not come anywhere close. If it went on for another ten years, it still wouldn't be close.
Interesting insights, thank you. Mirrors my experience too - it's very 2009 out there.
We got out of the GFC with Govt spending at COVID levels and a massive injection of offshore investment (Chch EQ insurance payout). Monetary policy was basically irrelevant - the lags are way too long.
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