Kerre Woodham: The unemployment figures make for grim reading

Stats New Zealand released the labour market statistics yesterday while I was on air talking to my caller Troy, and the numbers were not good. 

KW: The unemployment rate is 5.4% in the December quarter, up 5.3 in September. So we'll discuss that with Liam Dann in a minute. There we go.  

T: Interesting in an election year, that will be interesting for sure. 

Interesting in an election year for sure, Troy. For a government that campaigned on fixing the economy, getting people back into work, the figures are a cold hard dose of reality. An unemployment rate of 5.4%, total unemployed 165,000 – that's 5,000 extra people without a job since the last quarter. 16,000 without a job since this time last year. The underutilisation figures made for pretty grim reading too. Underutilisation includes the unemployed, the underemployed, part time workers who are wanting more hours – they might have been looking for a full-time job, all they can get is a part time, but they'll take it while they keep looking. And the potential labour force, people who want to work but aren't actively seeking it. I don't quite understand those people, do they just expect somebody to come knocking on their door saying, you're it, you're perfect. 150,000 and a car, come on in"? I don't know how they expect to find work, but there we go. The number of underutilised people rose by 2,000 over the quarter, by roughly 52,000 to 71,000 over the past year depending on all sorts of metrics. What it does end up with is a record high of 409,000 people.  

So there's a lot of people doing it tough. The Finance Minister Nicola Willis says, just hold your nerve, we'll come right. 

“We have been waiting for an economic recovery and there is some impatience, but all of the signs are there.” 

Yes. Well, are they? To be fair, look at the alternative. If you don't like what the Coalition Government is doing, have a look at Labour, Greens, and Te Pāti Māori and think, could they do better? But that's of cold comfort to the thousands of Kiwis that have had to relocate, they've had to pivot, they've had to reevaluate to get themselves into work, to get food on the table, the rent paid, to look after the kids.  

Another caller yesterday who had rung me previously told me he'd applied for more than 200 jobs. He's bought himself a business. Others have moved themselves and their families into different regions. The figures don't show the Kiwis who moved to different countries, nearly 73,000 to Australia – imagine how grim the stats would have been otherwise. Now there are some people really who could have expected to lose their jobs. If you were one of the many, many thousands of people who took a job with the public service in Wellington in the last six months of '23, come on. When you've got Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon both saying the public service needs to be cut, if you took a job then really you couldn't have expected to keep it. It would have been luck if you did.  

But for others, the slowing down of the economy has had a dramatic effect on them. The youth, because people hold onto their jobs longer, people don't take on trainees, they don't, can't afford to take a risk with a newbie or an apprentice. The business just can't sustain that. People 50 to 60, they might have been laid off. They've got many, you know, 10, 15, 20 years left in them. Try telling that to a prospective employer. Tough. So I would love to hear from those of you who have been looking for jobs, who have found jobs, who have pivoted, like my caller yesterday who after 200 rejections thought, “you know what? I'll do it myself," and bought himself a business. Those who've gone seeking a job in another part of the country. In Canterbury the figures are better than the national average. It's a tale as we've heard before of two economies. South Island's doing fine, North Island not so much. 

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