Employment positives despite recession fears

Wages are up:

Annually, average total hourly earnings increased 5.2 per cent as the annual increase in total gross earnings continued to exceed the annual increase in total paid hours.

And inflation is not yet 5.2%, so this is a very modest gain. Modest. Employment was up:

As measured by full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), employment increased 2.5 per cent for the June 2008 year, according to the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) also released by SNZ today

Not bad considering the global down-turn. But not sterling given the rapdid rise in commodities and oil have off-set the sense of any gain. Bollard would have had some indication of all these things when he set the cash rate recently.