Statistics New Zealand yesterday released its labour cost index, on salary and wage rates, for the year to March.
ASB economist Jane Turner said the wage data for the first quarter provided further confirmation of how subdued underlying inflation pressures are.
"There are early signs of wage increases in the Canterbury construction industry, as to be expected. However, there is also little evidence this is spilling over to the construction industry throughout the rest of the country," she said in a statement yesterday.
Westpac senior economist Felix Delbrück said the data rounded out a suite of indicators which showed inflation in New Zealand was subdued, and confirmed the notion that the Reserve Bank would not raise the interest-driving official cash rate before 2013.
The distribution and size of wage increases were unchanged from December, with 57% of those surveyed getting wages increase over the past year, and the median increase remaining at 3%, he said.
During the past year there had been a gradual increase in the proportion of people awarded wage increases of between 3% and 5%, from 15% to 18%, but that remained well below the 25% or more reporting those kinds of wage increases in the years before 2008, Mr Delbrück said.
Statistics New Zealand also released its quarterly employment survey yesterday, showing average ordinary-time earnings were up 3.8% for the year to March, compared with 2.8% for the corresponding period a year ago.
Ms Turner expected tomorrow's release of the household labour force survey to reflect a 0.2% increase in employment, and a steady unemployment rate of 6.3%.
She said the quarterly employment survey suggested indicators for employment growth were consistently weak, and pointed to a weaker outcome for the household labour force survey.
She predicted employment would increase just 0.2%, against market expectation of 0.5% from quarter to quarter and the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 6.3%, against market expectations of 6.2%.
