The take-home pay of workers in New Zealand have risen as exports picked up at a faster and stronger pace.

For the first time after almost two years of being stagnant, companies saw the need to pay more to attract and retain workers.

According to New Zealand's Statistics, the country's labor cost index released in Wellington today indicated that wages for non-governmental workers, excluding overtime, advanced 1.4 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. Annual growth improved from 1.3 percent, the first acceleration since the third quarter of 2008.

Wages rose 0.4 percent from the first quarter when they increased 0.3 percent, today's report showed. Average ordinary-time hourly earnings for non-governmental workers rose 0.6 percent in the quarter, the statistics agency said in its quarterly employment survey also published today.

The wage increase also coincides with New Zealand's central bank forecast that the economy will expand in 2010 at the fastest pace in five years, boosted by rising exports and manufacturing.

"Analysts were before pessimistic of this trend, but NZ has proven otherwise," said a a fund strategist at Hatfield &Associates.