Why is John Key so keen to minimise the impact of unemployment on New Zealanders.
In recent weeks he has taken to announcing weekly unemployment benefit figures at his weekly press conference.
He doesn’t understand that figures always drop in late spring and early summer.
But most of all he doesn’t understand that according to Paula Bennett “releasing weekly benefit data has a number of limitations” – being – ”unreliable ” – “volatile ” – “and potentially misleading to the public.”
In the year he has been Prime Minister the number of people on all benefits has gone up by over 56,000.
Think about those families as you crow John. When you use shonky data you will get caught.
With data like that nobody winz.
Annette, you must remembers its also Paula Bennett that holds responsibility for those shocking statistics. On saying that, I can tell that by the millions of supplementary questions in Parliamentry Questions for Oral Answer and written question in Parliamentary Questions for Written Answer you throw at her regularly.
In the year he has been Prime Minister the number of people on all benefits has gone up by over 56,000.
Well thank God the Job Summit was a ‘Do-fest’ not a ‘Talk-fest’, because all of those NACT initiatives are now kicking in. Like… ah.. the cycleway?
Sorry for the sarcasm, but seriously, I know I’m running against the polls saying this, but good government needs a plan that benefits the country. What plan has John Key and the National Party Brains Trust, which apparently includes Minister of Economic Development Gerry Brownlee, got?
Whatever.. There are 3000 teenagers saying any job’s a good job. Better than sitting about hand-wringing eh?
I wonder if anyone at the PM’s press conferences will remember to ask about the weekly unemployment benefit numbers – when Key stops mentioning them once they are trending up? I guess at that time weekly trends will no longer be seen as reliable!
Paula Bennett has even foreshadowed an increase over summer – so you would think the PM might be a little bit less bullish about the “decline”.
http://beehive.govt.nz/release/expect+spike+unemployment+students+seek+work
The other thing with the Unemployment benefit data being used for the weekly “decline” is that not all Unemployment benefit categories are included in it. The unemployment benefit (Student hardship), which full-time students qualify for when they have a year-end break before resuming studies, is not included (see recent MSD factsheet Note 2 – http://msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/newsroom/factsheets/benefit/2009/fact-sheet-ub-09-sep-30.doc). Given that Uni and Polytechnic courses have/are wrapping up and there are fewer summer jobs around – the numbers of students receiving this support are likely to be increasing quite a bit at the moment.
While it is understandable that the Student Hardship benefits are reported separately to other Unemployment benefits (as purpose of student hardship different and trend spikes over summer only) – the govt should not be claiming a weekly “decline” in one type of Unemployment Benefit while failing to provide the full picture across all unemployment benefit types. Particularly given it is summer and Student hardship unemployment benefits will be increasing.