Unemployment rate highest in more than a decade – labour market in crisisToday’s unemployment rate of 5.6 percent is the highest rate in more than a decade and shows a labour market clearly in crisis says Sandra Grey, President of the NZ Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi. “The data shows that we had 171,000 people unemployed in the June quarter, and the last time the unemployment rate was this high was September 2015. The number of people unemployed for more than six months was 69,300 – 40 percent of all those unemployed. This is an economy in the grip of an employment disaster, and the Government needs to get a grip. This is the broader measure of labour market capacity and tells us that the headline rate of unemployment is hiding the true scale of worklessness.