A lack of love for labour, competition and productivity

John Bolton, Squirrel

Banks economists are mostly predicting the employment rate will lift to 5.3% – the highest since 2016 – when Stats NZ’s labour market data is released on Wednesday.

ANZ is predicting unemployment will lift 0.2% from 5.1% to 5.3% as is ASB and BNZ, while Kiwibank says it will rise anywhere between 5.2% to 5.5%.

This could lead to more mortgages slipping into banks’ non-performing category. This is already at $2.457 billion – $9 million more than in May and up $550 million, or 28.9%, from $1.907 billion in June last year.

Squirrel Mortgages founder John Bolton says after the high interest rates endured over the past few years, it was inevitable the country would be in a slow and gradual recovery.