Thursday, May 11, 2006

Dole down - unemployment up

Back in early April I was critical of NZ Statistics for their sluggishness in releasing HLFS results. The US and Australia had their March 2006 quarter unemployment figures out within days. Over one month later our HLFS results are available.

Unemployment is up from 3.6 to 3.9 percent.

One area I monitor closely is the number of single parents with dependent children who are in "none employed" households. As the number of people on the DPB dropped by just under 3,000 from Dec 2005 to March 2006 I was expecting a drop in the "none employed" households. In fact, the result is the reverse of that. There was a rise of 2,700 taking the total to 46.6 percent of all One Parent with dependent children only.

Which would indicate the people who moved off the DPB did so for reasons other than work. Typically the main reasons would be transfer to another benefit, change of marital circumstances or leaving the country.

One mystery is solved though. Now I know why David Benson-Pope left it till yesterday to trumpet the March quarter dole numbers. Perhaps he knew today he'ed have to tell us the official unemployment rate has gone up. Confused?

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