The latest unemployment stats make for grim reading. Over 19,000 Kiwis have joined the ranks of the unemployed in the past 3 months. Since National has been in office unemployment has increased by 53,000. So what’s the National government focused on? Well they’ve spent most of this week trying to doctor figures to hide the fact that the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia has grown during their time in office, despite John Key’s pledge to make closing it his “fundamental priority”.
We should never regard unemployment as merely a matter of statistics. These are real people with real lives, real families, real homes, real mortgages, real bills to pay. The increase in unemployment from 6% to 6.8% in three short months marks thousands of individual tragedies. It’s a much bigger increase than anyone was predicting and highlights how adrift this government have already become.
Back in May John Key was happy to pronounce that his government is on the right track due to falling unemployment, so by his own standard they must have jumped the track in the past 3 months. Where is their plan? The Jobs Summit was a joke. The cycleway has failed to produce the thousands of jobs Key promised. Gerry’s bold plan to mine in National Parks has been stomped on. So what’s next? The thousands of Kiwis struggling to find work are keen to know…
Doesn’t Labour support raising min wage to $15 per hour – which treasury forecast would result in a lose of 8,000 jobs?
I’ve been one of those struggling to find permanent work for yonks now – bosses want casual workers and why wouldn’t they?
Deb
Treasury always declares gloom and doom whenever the minimum wage is mentioned. When the wage actually goes up – nothing happens.
This Government has a plan – it is not to have a plan. Cunning, eh?
Darn it
this site said it didn’t post 
@Peter freedman – during the time of the international credit boom anyone could get a job, but now the bubble burst young people are now disproportionately facing unemployment. One factor in that is that people are being priced out of the market. Labour want to make that problem worse
@Oliver – while it’s hard to believe you actually give a tinker’s, what proof do you have that raising the minimum wage actually does cost jobs? Any boss who is that bad of a manager that paying his employees enough to live on will cause his business to crash almost certainly has more to worry about than that! (Retaining staff in a time of low unemployment would be one of them, but now, it’s more likely that he lies awake worrying about getting his legs broken by those with whom he took out his latest “business loan”..
Deb
@debby – I was reporting what treasury said, as I stated…
@Debby, Minimum wage laws price people out of the market whose skills do not justify the minimum wage, it is also quite discrimanatory as sadly the people who fall into this groups are usually from the lower socio economic group and/or from a minority group… This creates all kinds of social problems associated with not having a job, a good example is what has happened in the IHC community since Labour legislated that people with mental difficulties couldn’t earn below the minimum wage…
The answer is a negative income tax below the poverty line but our politicians aren’t bold enough to trust us to understand that…
Jeremy M Harris says:
August 5, 2010 at 7:14 pm
@Debby, Minimum wage laws price people out of the market whose skills do not justify the minimum wage, it is also quite discrimanatory as sadly the people who fall into this groups are usually from the lower socio economic group and/or from a minority group… This creates all kinds of social problems associated with not having a job, a good example is what has happened in the IHC community since Labour legislated that people with mental difficulties couldn’t earn below the minimum wage
Ideological claptrap. Show me one time, anywhere in the world, where an increase in unemployment was caused by a rise in the minimum waqge. The labour market doesn’t work like other markets, it is far more complicated than that.
This is like a belief in the trickle down theory. Conservatives convince themselves it works even though there is never any proof.
Your response is ideological claptrap, have a look at the economic growth of regions that have not practised minimum wage regulation…
I’m not a conservative…
It’s got to be more complex otherwise Australia would have collapsed with its higher minimum wage than us, Germany with its stronger employee laws…
And who takes most of those winings from that economic growth, JMH?
Might it be corporates like Apple, their executive management and shareholders?
Do you think that it is fair that labour gets only 4-5% of the retail price of an iPhone, and as a consequence have to work 65-80 hour work weeks just to make a living wage?
By the way, the Chinese govt has realised this situation is not sustainable and is shoring up the ability of workers to exercise additional labour rights.
China has also made one other realisation in the last couple of years: by acting as the low cost sweat shop of the world they keep only a very small proportion of the economic value of say, an iPhone. In contrast, those who own the brands and the technology who keep most of the economic value generated by the sale of an iPhone. You can see China now pushing ahead with its own brands, Lenovo, Haier, etc to capitalise on this understanding.
NZ needs to very carefully consider which road it wants to go down.
Removal of the minimum wage must be done in concert with a negative income tax… China doesn’t have one so it isn’t relevant…
@JMH: Dubai, anyone?
Sigh, I’ll repeat again for those who have been so ingrained that no minimum wage = evil scum and that they must bark little jack russell’s when anyone mentions it’s elimination:
If the minimum is eliminated it must be accompanied by a negative income tax… This would result in higher productivity, higher income for those in the lower income brackets, less social problems, etc…
Out of interest, which countries are you promoting as role models for observing how this approach works?
NZ…