PHOTO: Cameron Bagrie, managing director at Bagrie Economics
A leading economist is warning that unemployment is set to ‘surge’ as the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
House prices will also be affected, as the economic shock of coronavirus carries over to the property market, says Cameron Bagrie, managing director at Bagrie Economics.
Although the latest StatsNZ figures from early February show unemployment at 4 percent, Bagrie believes the current figure would be in the “mid sixes” right now – with that number set to climb even higher throughout the year.
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“To put that in perspective, unemployment peaked at 6.7 percent during the GFC [global financial crisis] – so we’re going to surge beyond that well and truly because we haven’t seen the end of this year, layoffs are still coming,” Bagrie told The AM Show on Monday.
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