Covid 19 coronavirus: Auckland lost 200 jobs per day during August close

By Amy Williams of RNZ

The Auckland Council’s economic team, which calculated the cost, said the total of 4,205 jobs lost in the region was 60 percent of the national total for the month.

Its chief economist, David Norman, said job losses in the city averaged 200 a day, which was less than the 250 a day forecast at alert level 3, but still high.

“They are real people. They are lives and families to support, and many of them lost their jobs – more than 400. So that’s a real impact.”

“Never in my economic career did I think that I would use public health advice as a starting point to try to think about where the economy is going, looking at alert levels to try to determine how many people you think are going to have jobs, or what so strong will be the economy.

“This is not something they teach you in any textbook.”

Norman is hopeful that the economy will recover as it did after the first nationwide lockdown, albeit from a slightly lower starting position.

“What has encouraged us to see, through the second wave, just like we saw in wave one, is that there has been remarkable resistance in the economy, companies have recovered quickly,” he said.

The number of jobs posted for Auckland on the TradeMe website decreased significantly during the September quarter.

But as the city recovers, more people are looking for work.

According to Trade Me, applications for office administration and customer service roles have led to an increase in job seekers, more than doubling, even though the number of roles has been cut in half.

His jobs spokesman Matt Tolich said that for every job opening in Auckland in September there were 20 percent more applicants, reaching twice the national average number of applicants.

“There are more people on the site looking for positions. It was up 11 percent in the quarter, so with more jobs starting to come to the site, we hope those people will find the right job for them.”