New figures show the number of New Zealanders on the main unemployment benefit has kept climbing, even as the Government points to a record run of people leaving benefits for paid work.
Ministry of Social Development data released on Thursday put 218,481 people on Jobseeker Support at the end of June, a total that has risen steadily through a soft labour market. The release gave the Government and the Opposition two very different stories to tell about the same set of numbers, and both leaned into them hard.
Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston chose to lead with the exits. In the year to June, 86,544 people moved off a main benefit and into work, an increase of 5,772 on the previous year. In the June quarter alone, 21,261 people left a benefit for a job, up 1,665 on the same quarter a year earlier.
“Economic conditions are challenging, but today’s figures are promising for the job market and job seekers,” Upston said in a statement.
She pointed to a set of programmes the Government credits for the lift in exits, including the traffic light obligations system for jobseekers, the Korero Mahi seminars that help people with CVs and job referrals, and employer partnerships such as ChamberWorks and regional jobs and skills hubs at Auckland Airport and in the north.
The Minister also made the case that the headline benefit total can be misleading at this time of year. She noted that the number of working-age people on a benefit typically rises by around one percent in the June quarter because of seasonal patterns, and argued that year on year comparisons give a more reliable read on whether the job market is improving.
The counter-argument writes itself. Whatever the exit numbers say, the stock of people on Jobseeker Support is still going up, not down, and that runs against one of the coalition’s clearest promises. National campaigned on getting 50,000 people off the Jobseeker benefit by 2030, and independent analysis reported by RNZ has the Government tracking well wide of that mark, projected to be about 44 percent over its own target.
Labour seized on exactly that gap. The party’s social development spokesperson, Willow-Jean Prime, said the figures showed the Government was moving further away from its election promise to bring Jobseeker numbers down, not closer to it. Labour says that if it wins this year’s election it would rebuild training and employment pathways, including expanding the Apprenticeship Boost scheme so more people can pick up skills and qualifications on the way into secure work.
Prime also accused the Government of cutting tens of millions of dollars from Apprenticeship Boost, the Tupu Aotearoa employment programme and Maori trades training, and argued that pulling money out of those pipelines makes it harder, not easier, for people to move from a benefit into a job.
The tension in the data is real. It is entirely possible for more people to be finding work and for the total on the benefit to keep rising at the same time, if the number of people newly losing jobs or ageing off other support outpaces the number leaving. That is roughly what the June figures describe. The exit engine is running faster than it was a year ago, but the inflow is running faster still.
Underneath the national total, the pain is not spread evenly. Reporting on the same figures noted that Maori remain over-represented on Jobseeker Support, and the pattern tends to track regions and industries that have shed jobs fastest through the downturn rather than any single cause. Construction, manufacturing and parts of the retail sector have all been letting staff go, and the benefit rolls in provincial areas exposed to those industries have felt it first.
For voters, the numbers land in the middle of an election year in which the cost of living and jobs are running neck and neck as the issues people say they care about most. The Government wants the conversation to be about the exits, the story of people getting back into work despite a tough economy. The Opposition wants it to be about the total, the promise to shrink the benefit rolls that is heading the wrong way. Both framings are supported by the same spreadsheet, which is why this particular data release will be argued over well past the day it landed.
The next quarterly update, due in October, will land even closer to polling day, and both sides will be watching whether the total finally turns or keeps grinding higher.
If you want to see where the parties stand on welfare, work and the wider economy before you vote, you can compare them with Newswire’s voting tool.
What do you make of the figures? Do more people finding work matter more to you than the rising total, or is it the other way around? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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