Economic Note: Another drop in the jobless rate expected in Q4

Next week on 1 February (10.45am NZT), HLFS, QES and LCI Q3 labour market statistics are released. This will be the third release under the new labour definitions in the HLFS and the results should be more settled now. However, while comparisons with Q2 and Q3 2016 are possible, further prior period comparison is not straight forward, given the extensive changes made to the survey by Stats NZ. The QES and LCI data are unaffected by the changes.