Employment falls, unemployment rises, but jobless benefit numbers down!

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The September year report from Statistics New Zealand confirms the economy has stalled and unemployment is rising. But WINZ reports that the number of people considered work ready and receiving Jobseeker Support dropped by 1,022 between September 2014 and September 2015 – from 66,754 to 65,732. The number on Jobseeker Support with a health condition or disability also fell. The total number receiving a Jobseeker Support benefit fell by 2,232 from 123,133 to 120,901.

How is that possible when the number of New Zealanders employed in the year to September 2015, fell by 11,000, and the number of unemployed increased by 14,300, to 148,800. The number of jobless was also up by 40,100 to 269,600! The number of people registered with WINZ as “jobseekers” also increased from 268,610 to 283,077 – an increase of 14,457!

This simply confirms that WINZ is continuing its brutal denial of income support to those genuinely unemployed without regard to their legal obligations.

There was a broad correlation between the number of people receiving unemployment benefits from WINZ and the number of people recorded as “Jobless” by the Household Labour Force Survey. When I used annualised data for the June years I found that beneficiary numbers were roughly 75% of the jobless number from 1990 to 2001. Then the percentage reduced every year until the series was discontinued in 2013 when the percentage of jobless receiving a benefit hit a record low of 19%.

If the 75% ratio was applied to the current jobless number it would imply that there should be 200,000 people receiving the unemployment benefit when there are actually only 65,632 work ready Jobseeker beneficiaries.

Successive Labour and National governments have taken over a billion dollars a year out of working class communities and families. In my view this is grand larceny committed by the richest on the poorest in our communities and head should roll.

Beneficiaries as a percentage of the jobless

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Mike, you well know that statistics are only collected for use by those who need lies to back up data they haven’t bothered collecting, because that would show them up for the crock of shit they are !!!

  2. Also bare in mind the insane process that makes everyone’s life hell just to get to the point of getting an appointment to try to get signed up for a benefit takes 21 days now.

    For some people it is to much stress on top off other issues they have to deal with.

  3. What is Unite going to do about this problem? Unite is a union for low paid workers, unemployed and beneficiaries. When is Unite going to recruit and organise the unemployed, as Unite’s constitution requires it to do?

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