“To answer my own question, it’s possible that some people stayed in part-time work and decided they didn’t want extra hours after all. Hey, I said possible, not plausible.”

Actually, I like it. Its the discouraged worker effect, just coming through part time labour. Nice – I might have to borrow that 😉

To answer my own question, it’s possible that some people stayed in part-time work and decided they didn’t want extra hours after all. Hey, I said possible, not plausible.

“So here’s a puzzle for you: where did the underemployed people go?”

I know, that absolutely did my head in when I went through the numbers!!!

Ultimately, SA numbers often don’t add up. This is standard, but it is possible that one of the seasonally adjusted factors was funky – I wouldn’t be surprised to see (another) big revision of the quarter by Stats NZ before the March figures comes out in May 😛

Also, as a note, there is no contradiction between talking about layoffs and employment being flat – those people can get laid off only for other people to rock into jobs. However, I do agree that the SA numbers don’t add up.

But the December result wasn’t driven by layoffs – employment was only down a bit, and part-time employment was flat. So here’s a puzzle for you: where did the underemployed people go? They didn’t go into full-time work, because those numbers were down; they didn’t go into unemployment, because part-time jobs didn’t fall; and they didn’t leave the labour force, because the participation rate was up. So where are they?