Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The resilience of the New Zealand economy has been demonstrated by last week's Statistics New Zealand job figures for the September 2021 quarter. The data showed the unemployment rate fell from 4 percent in June to a record-equalling low of 3.4 percent in the September quarter, last seen in December 2007. The number of unemployed fell by 18,000 to 98,000. The last time it was under 100,000 was in the September 2008 quarter. The unemployment rate is now 14 percent below where it was in the pre - COVID-19 December 2019 quarter. The data also shows that the economy continued to add jobs, with 54,000 more people in employment than in the June quarter. The number of people in employment is up by 115,000 since the September 2020 quarter, when unemployment peaked at 5.3 percent.