Wellington City has lost more than 10% of its jobs in a year, data shows.
As more Health New Zealand cuts are revealed, data indicates the depth of the impact of the economic downturn, and political cuts, on the centre of the capital.
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub compiled data that showed that from a year ago, the number of jobs in Wellington City has dropped 19,430.
That is equal to 11.6% of the jobs in that area. He said the impact on the region would be grim.
Auckland as a region – a much larger area – had lost just over 10,000 jobs over the same period.
“The issue for Wellington city is that of course it’s very Wellington CBD-centric but all the people who live in Wellington don’t necessarily work in the CBD.
“The effect is showing up in a wider region.”
Most of the cuts would be people who commuted into the city to work, he said.
“The impact is much more widely felt. There are 153,000 jobs in Wellington’s CBD. That’s jobs located in the city but there are only 100,000 people in Wellington City who have jobs.”
He said it was not clear how many of the Wellington job losses were directly due to public sector job cuts – but it would be a proportion.
On Friday, Health NZ confirmed almost 600 people had taken voluntary redundancy.
RNZ has estimated about 10,000 public sector roles have been cut so far.
