The ANZ Job Ads index showed ads in the Waikato had bounced back spectacularly after last year’s dairy-related downturn, up 27.1% year-on-year.
"This likely reflects very strong construction in the region," ANZ senior economist Sharon Zollner said.
Hawke’s Bay job ads were up 17.6% year-on-year, Manawatu was up 17.3% and job ads carried by the Otago Daily Times were up 19.1%.
Because newspaper job advertising was more volatile amid a declining trend, ANZ would exclude newspapers from the job ads series from next month, she said.
Fairfax had told ANZ it could no longer provide the bank with data, due to resourcing changes.
"Newspaper job ads are in long-term decline, biasing down our measure of total ads. The ODT is holding up better than most. They take much longer to collect. Without them, we can publish earlier in the month," Ms Zollner said.
There would still be a job ads measure for Otago and, in principle, ANZ could break out data by region and sector, such as construction in Otago.
But for everywhere but the largest regions, those double-split components would probably be too volatile to be informative, Ms Zollner said.
The regions for which ANZ only had internet-based data had strong annual growth.
Advertising in Northland was up 27.5%, Gisborne was up 35.4%, Taranaki was up 12.2%, Nelson/Marlborough was up 43.9% and the West Coast had a 28% increase.
Southland, with growth of 2.7%, was dragging the chain.
Overall, job ads rose 0.3% in September — the eighth consecutive monthly increase — to be 13.5% higher than a year ago.
Ms Zollner said the rise was in line with strong intentions to hire seen in the ANZ Business Outlook Survey.
Internet job advertising lifted 1.5% in September.
Auckland job ads were 14.8% higher than a year ago and Wellington ads rose by 13.8% after a rapid acceleration.
The slow down in the rebuild effort continued to weigh on the Canterbury labour market where job ads were 7.8% lower than a year ago.
"With firms in a mood to expand, skill shortages, rather than demand, are set to become the key brake on activity," she said.
