Beyond Unemployment: Measuring Regional Labour Market Performance

Abstract

High performing regional labour markets support the shift towards greater value and improved rewards for businesses, workers and communities. This occurs through gains in productivity achieved through sectoral economies of scale and more efficient regional environments, which provide the climate for global skills and talent. As such they are an important contributor creating: competitive sectors and regions, thriving communities and make significant contributions to national economic output. In the long-term, economic growth, increases in living standards and economic wellbeing depend on sustained growth in productivity and the significant contributions that sectors and regions make. This paper presets an initial investigation into measuring the performance of New Zealand regional labour markets. New Zealand contains many local and regional labour markets which operate at a variety of geographic levels. The paper discusses the concept of ‘high performing’ labour markets and investigates and considers a general framework which can, in principle, be applied to consider the performance of the labour market at any geographic level. The framework identifies the key characteristics of high performing regional labour markets and suggests how these can be measured in terms of supply, demand and functionality characteristics.