More Māori are in work now than at any time since 1986, when modern records began.
Jarrod Haar (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Mahuta), a professor at AUT's Business School, told Breakfast the latest Māori unemployment rate of 5.5% is good news - but he still has concerns, both around the rate compared to NZ Europeans and the reasons for the drop.
"It's still 190% higher than New Zealand European, so there is still this disparity," he said. "But here's the scary thing, the last eight quarters before that it was 234% on average, and the eight quarters before that it was 256%.
"So at 190%, that is good news but it still is quite a gulf there."
He said the reasons for that were complicated, and included education but also "aspects around role models".
Haar worries the reason the Māori unemployment rate is trending down might be the "perverse reason... that economically Māori households, whānau, can't afford to not have extra people in the whānau going out to work".
READ MORE: Unemployment rate steady, wages up 6.4% - Stats NZ
"So instead of going to upskill and train in tertiary education, for example, you go and get a minimum-paying job and maybe it's 20, 30 hours a week, it may not be 40 hours a week, and then you start to change your long-term earning opportunities."
And for people who are in employment, Haar had some advice, saying this is a great time for workers to ask for a pay rise or promotion or to get a new job.
"Once immigration is open and people are pouring into the country, all workers will lose some of that bargaining power.
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