For a Rockstar economy, it’s pretty remarkable that an unexpected and unpredicted jump in unemployment from 5.4% to 5.7% get’s this kind of headline from the NZ Herald…
Jobseeker rush keeps lid on employment stats
A surge in the number of job seekers has outpaced employment growth and is keeping a lid on pay rises.Employment grew a strong 1.2 per cent in the last three months of 2014 but the 28,000 jobs added were outstripped by a record 36,000 rise in the size of the labour force, which pushed the unemployment rate up to 5.7 per cent from 5.4 per cent previously.
The number of people unemployed rose 8000 to 143,000, the highest level since March last year.
…the Right are trying to claim that our participation rates and increased migration are the points to focus on rather than the actual increase in the unemployed which is garbage. Key’s draconian welfare crackdown is throwing NZers off welfare as fast as they can find them, and yet unemployment is growing. The piddling amount beneficiaries are now working suggests a participation rate far more full of promise than reality.
What’s troubling was that most economists were claiming the unemployment rate would go down, not up.
If this is a ‘rockstar’ economy the beneficiaries and working poor didn’t get a ticket.
There’s an excellent article by David Graeber on “The Baffler” website:
http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/a-practical-utopians-guide-to-the-coming-collapse
If I may quote just a few lines ((the entire article is well worth a read):
“The politicians, CEOs, trade bureaucrats, and so forth who regularly meet at summits like Davos or the G20 may have done a miserable job in creating a world capitalist economy that meets the needs of a majority of the world’s inhabitants (let alone produces hope, happiness, security, or meaning), but they have succeeded magnificently in convincing the world that capitalism—and not just capitalism, but exactly the financialized, semifeudal capitalism we happen to have right now—is the only viable economic system. If you think about it, this is a remarkable accomplishment.”
In other words, folks, what we are sold by the Government propaganda machine, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, is simply just one great big con-job.
Sure, it furthers the needs and the aspirations of the 1%. But that is not what a REAL ECONOMY – one that works for the people as a whole and not just the 1% – is all about.
I feel we are about to have ahead a very hard winter of discontent.
NZ has become a undemocratic democracy.
We have state assets being sold against the peoples will, we get lied to, incomes are low, prices of goods and services keep on rising, young people are being denied, middle class are being squeezed , many elderly are at wits end on how to survive on the National Super.
It is not a pretty picture in this Rock Star economy called New Zealand.
I am retired. I do not know one retiree who is at their wits end and I know a lot. The drivel on this blog site is unreal. I do think Bradburys take on Saudi Arabia is on the money though
“I am retired. I do not know one retiree who is at their wits end and I know a lot.”
Then consider yourself and your acquaintances fortunate. However, just because the sun is shining in your corner of the village, doesn’t mean it isn’t raining down the road.
Therefore I respectfully suggest that your circle of acquaintances is not representative of NZ.
Hi Mick.
Read the article by Brian Fallow in Fridays edition of the Auckland Herald.
Might open your eyes just a little.
As I said on another post .
There is no middle class any more you are with working class or the 1%.
If you aren’t the 1% then u are being screwed just the same as beneficiaries are.
If you haven’t had a wage rise in years you are being screwed.
The new Zealand e onimy is slowly but surely coming to a stop.
Those stats are suspect anyway given they are from our government, the manipulative one that will not tolerate bad news. Roy Morgan does a version that tends to be at least a percent or two higher. And lets not mention the under-employed!
Nice inversion by the Herald though, if it hits 10% will they be breaking out the Moët?
Yep its a rock star economy all right. Just ask the people who pick cans and bottles out of rubbish bins, scoot across intersections washing car windscreens, beg on street corners and sleep under bridges if they are enjoying their rock star lifestyle. Only the NBR would be arrogant enough to claim that rising unemployment is a good thing.
What countries are doing better than us?. Living in christchurch the rate is about 3 per cent which is really zero. But there are still young guys at some intersections cleaning windows. That has nothing to do with unemployment but all about tax avoidance.
Christchurch is an exception like no other , for obvious reasons.
Any accountant worth their salt would have it on their books as an extraordinary item!
3% is not zero it is 3 people in every hundred.
That adds up to quite a few people.
Also I live in Christchurch and I know a lot of people who are underemployed ie we cant get enough regular hours of work each week. Many are older women ( and some men) in their late 50s and early sixties feeling to old physically for hard labour on building sites.
Eric Cramption notes:
So, not the bad news at all that you are portraying.
I’d love to have seen this guy doing press releases during outbreaks of the Black Death back in the day, just imagine the positives that could have been found, the extra and cheaper accommodation, the rise in the situations vacant, endless really!
The work for the gravediggers
And when you factor in the vast number of employment opportunities that have been brought about purely because of the Christchurch rebuild, this Government is an absolute disaster.
Having China making faulty railway wagons for us, whilst simultaneously throwing our top engineers, fitters and turners and welders on the scrap heap, is about as dumb as you can get.
These morons have no idea of the intergenerational skills that a lot of those people possessed. You can’t just turn those level
of skills on and of like a tap and is just one of many examples of the short sighted mentality of Key , Joyce and English.
The Basket Cases, is the name of the new Rock band
Yep, it’s a rock star economy. John Key is Jumping Jack Flash, and New Zealand is Altamont
C’mon this is great news!!!
Only a 0.3% increase. God I’m so grateful.
If the loony left was in power, we’d have double-digit unemployment for sure.
New Zealand’s in really good hands with Key, English and Joyce at the helm ably assisted by Brownlee, Bridges, Bennett, Tolley and Parata. Shame about Sabin, but. Nearly a Minister.
“if the loony left..blah, blah, blah”. The fascist right never let the facts get in the way of their baseless bullshit. Quick review: Debt at handover from loony left Govt. to fascist right Govt.- $10b. Current debt under fascist right, $101b- and this is after sale of assets!! Where did that asset sale money go? Who knows? But anyhow… this is great news! Employment under the fascist right is the mass casualization of the workforce to destroy organised labour and thus, force wages down to create a large, cheap, labour pool- much like third world countries, actually. One hour of employment per week equals ’employed’, unemployment is defined as being without paid work, where a person was available for and actively seeking work. Guess why the fascists don’t want to raise the retirement age, amongst other reasons.
Never mind land, you will feel different when the hang-over wears off
The sums up why Key can lie, similarly National MPs can get away with anything they want, NZ can run up incredible debt, increasing disparity, people beg, people live in cars and in general NZ goes about in a drunken stupor as a society and keeps National in place. From Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler:
“He noted New Zealand was the only advanced economy with a positive output gap in the past two years, a falling jobless rate, strong migration, strong labour force participation and upbeat business and consumer sentiment”.
Whatever Wheeler is describing speaks good news and that is what gets repeated over and over, we’ve never had it so good. But look past the hype and this good news feels as substantial as a film set facade.
In highs workers get more pay because there’s more demand for their services and they can go elsewhere but in the last 6 years wages have remained almost frozen. Were it not for Key lifting the minimum wage from time to time real wage growth would be non-existent. High migration is because Aussie is on a downer, its Neo Libs have only just begun and Kiwi’s who fled NZ because it was so bad here suddenly found it worse there without a safety net. Strong Labour force participation does not bring with it reward, rather exploitation of people surviving or not on crap wages and worse conditions. Is a zero hour contract worth celebrating? And what does positive output gap mean, not much when we keep racking up deficits, nothing positive about that output. It’s all shits and giggles
Wheeler is describing what seems like positive economic theory but this time around its very very selective in who this applies to and it’s not most of the population.
new Zealand exports its unemployment to Australia and the paula benefit cuts fraudulently hide the true number
When Joeblow sees the unemployment rate they think a good, 9 to 5 job – they don’t think 3 hours a week of unpaid, voluntary work with the tax payer or parents taking up the slack of supporting this individual.
That article illustrates well the reason I am completely through reading that “newspaper”. It’s amazing how with overseas media one can read in-depth news from a variety of perspectives, here however it’s almost exclusively a vested interest conservative perspective.
Find reading various blogs nowadays one can be better informed as the blogger does the undesirable job of sifting through the mountain of media chaff to highlight relevant news. While blogs have their own bias, at least it’s a different perspective and most are not for profit.
Considering recent events, the Herald seems to becoming a full-blown propaganda outlet, a neoliberal Pravda.
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