Unemployment - Digging beneath the headline rate

The unemployment rate rose in the June quarter to 5.2 percent. For those who are interested, here's some finer detail behind the headline statistic.

While the media has latched on to the idea that the elderly are discriminated against in the workforce the stats don't support it. The highest unemployment rates are amongst the young: 15-19 year-olds at 23% and 20-24 year-olds at 9.8% . Thereafter, as the age-bands increase, the unemployment rates fall significantly with most numbers starting with a 3 and the lowest - 2.9% - belonging to the 55-59 year-olds. It'd be fair to state that the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed. It is only after age 60 that an increase in those 'not in the labour force' is marked, indicating around 30,000 individuals choosing early retirement. Whether that is voluntary or involuntary is unknown. But the unemployment rate for 60-64 year-olds is just 3.2%. Past the age of sixty five, 217,500 individuals continued to work, an increase on June 2024 of 7,800. Because most people leave the labour force after 65, that age group's unemployment rate is the lowest at just 1.6 percent.

So it is the very young who are bearing the brunt of unemployment.

In terms of ethnicity, Pacific people have the highest unemployment rate at 12.1 percent followed by Maori (10%); Middle Eastern and Latin American and African (6.5%); Asian (5.2%) and European (3.8%). This pattern has held over decades. The lower skilled and educated feature more heavily among the unemployed.

The fact that Auckland's unemployment rate was high at last got some attention. I have written previously about Wellington doing a lot of whinging when their numbers aren't the worst. Auckland's unemployment rate is 6.1% - up from 4.6% a year ago. Wellington's rate is 4.1% - down from 4.3% a year ago. As usual, the further south the region is, the lower the unemployment rate. Otago has the lowest rate at 3%.

Which sectors are faring the best? With respect to numbers of people employed, the following sectors gained over the year: electricity,  gas, water and waste; wholesale trade; financial and insurance services; rental, hiring and real estate services; and education and training. Many of us won't be surprised to see electricity, gas, and insurance featuring among the 'healthier' sectors.

There's been a bit of media-murmuring over the NEET rate (Not in Employment, Education or Training) but it's actually fairly steady for 15–24-year-olds moving from 12 to 12.2% June on June. There was a very big jump in 15-19 year-olds in education between March and June this year rising by 23,400 (which helps explain why the education and training sector is adding jobs.) Hopefully this will play out as a good news story in time.

Internationally New Zealand now sits 18th out of 38 OECD countries - just above the average unemployment rate of 4.9%. The English-speaking countries we often compare ourselves to have the following rates: Australia and the United States (4.2%); the United Kingdom (4.5%) and Canada (6.9%).

Finally, females are slightly more likely to be unemployed with a rate of 5.5% versus males at 5%.

All in all, the usual patterns are evident with respect to age, ethnicity and gender. The numbers don't necessarily support the narratives pushed by the likes of RNZ and Stuff who appear intent on winding up anger against the current government.

All of the above data comes from the HLFS (Household Labour Force Survey) for June 2025.

In a diversion I will make a final comment about how closely related those numbers are to benefit stats. Not very.

The HLFS has 158,000 people unemployed whereas 216,000 are on the Jobseeker benefit. Some of the difference occurs because some on Jobseeker are partially employed. Some of the difference occurs because not all Jobseeker beneficiaries are necessarily in the labour force (available for work). They might be temporarily too ill to work.

The total number of working age people on benefits though is 406,128 or 12.5 percent of the 18-64 year-old population.  The balance is mainly on  Sole Parent Support, or on what's now called a Supported Living Payment due to permanent incapacitation.

If the usual trends occur, in time the unemployment rate will abate and those who have been on welfare short-term will return to the workforce. But the ongoing underlying dependency will persist as the headline numbers drop and politicians think the job is done.

Study results baffle researchers

Fascinating news out of the US this week. The prevailing ideology - mirrored in NZ - is that poverty in and of itself harms children's development. That's the thesis behind welfare for poor mothers and more specifically, Ardern's impetus for her Best Start payments.

The US is a far more sensible country than NZ. It actually tests theories. Try to do this kind of research in NZ and academic ethics committees would be all over it like a rash. It'd never happen.

The National Bureau of Economic Research published the combined efforts of private and public institutes which conducted the following study:

"Between May 2018 and June 2019, 1,000 mothers were recruited shortly after giving birth in 12 postpartum wards across 4 U.S. metropolitan areas: New York, the greater Omaha Metropolitan area, New Orleans, and Minneapolis/St. Paul."

400 of the mothers were given $333 monthly unconditional cash; the other 600, just $20. The mothers needed to be below the federal poverty line to qualify. The cash was initially promised for 40 months and has been extended to 76. 

" Forty-one percent of mothers self-identified as Hispanic, and 40% self-identified as non-Hispanic Black. Approximately 9% of the sample self-identified as White. On average, mothers were about 27 years old, had completed close to 12 years of schooling, and had between 1 and 2 older children at the time of the birth. Thirty-eight percent reported living with the biological father of the baby at the time of the birth."

The results reported are at 48 months - when the child turned four.

"The Baby’s First Years study tests whether monthly unconditional cash transfers to low income mothers beginning shortly after birth affect children’s development. This paper reports results after the first 4 years of the planned 6-year RCT [Randomized Controlled Trial], at a point when mothers in the high-cash gift group had received about $16,000 in cash gifts and mothers in the low-cash gift group had received less than $1,000. We found no evidence of group differences on preregistered primary (language, executive function, social-emotional development, composite of high-frequency brain activity) or secondary (visual processing/spatial perception, pre-literacy skills, diagnosis of developmental conditions) outcomes."

Holy heck.

Ensuing discussions in the paper include questions like: Was the payment high enough to affect child outcomes?  Is it too early to expect to see a positive result? Did the pandemic interfere with the results?

The authors add, "...the lack of impacts on age-4 child outcomes raises the possibility that income alone may not affect children’s early development."

The "possibility"??

A report about the study from the New York Times states:

"It has long been clear that children from affluent families exhibit stronger cognitive development and fewer behavioral problems, on average, than their low-income counterparts. The question is whether their advantage comes from money itself or from related forces like parental health and education, neighborhood influences or the likelihood of having two parents in the home." (my emphasis)

As someone who takes a particular interest in welfare, the paper frustrates in providing no data about the mother's dependency status (preventing any within-group analysis on my part). However, according to the aforementioned NY Times report:

"While opponents say income guarantees could erode the work ethic, mothers in the two groups showed no differences across four years in hours worked, wages earned or the likelihood of having jobs."

The NY Times writer must be privy to further undisclosed data because employment status does not feature in the primary paper. The test participants were not qualified by source of household income so it can only be assumed that they were a mix of employed and unemployed mothers.

Typically, proponents of welfare from the Left are raising objections to the results (aided by the paper's authors.) Even one of the lead researchers said, “I was very surprised — we were all very surprised [that] the money did not make a difference.”

Disappointed perhaps?

But this is science, and while scientific evidence inevitably develops and may change over time, right now the theory that unconditional cash improves child development amongst the poor has been dealt a significant blow.

Proof that National is Labour-lite

National governments are better economic managers BUT avoid the entrenched age-old problems that hold NZ back.

Welfare for sole mothers is one such problem.

In the six years between 2017 and 2023 there were five things Labour changed under PM Ardern and MSD Minister Sepuloni:

1/ Child support payments previously kept by Treasury to offset sole parent benefits were passed directly on to the custodial parent

2/ The penalty for not naming a liable parent (usually the father) was abolished

3/ The requirement to face work-testing one year after a subsequent child was added to an existing benefit was abolished

4/ Best Start - a substantial additional weekly payment for 0-2 year-olds - was introduced 

5/ After adjusting for inflation increased incomes for sole parents with two or more children by 48 percent

Not one of these policies has been reversed.

They all encourage single parenthood as a lifestyle. And National appears to be on board.

On the back of these changes the number of children dependent on a sole parent benefit has risen 37 percent from 117,471 to 160,653 (June 2017 and 2025 quarters). These numbers do not include those children older than 13 whose sole parent has been moved to a Jobseeker benefit.

The facts are that children of benefit-dependent sole mothers are far more likely to suffer abuse and neglect; educational under-achievement; ill health; poverty; transience and become known to Oranga Tamariki and Corrections. And perhaps most worryingly, to become state-dependent single parents themselves perpetuating the sorry cycle.

Armed with this knowledge, politicians should be designing policy that discourages females from becoming sole parents in the first place and, especially, from further adding to their families.

The last Labour government did the very opposite and National, it turns out, is no better.

PM's new line

The Prime Minister is back from his holiday and insists the economy has turned a corner.

But it's not showing in the unemployment data. June 2025 benefit data is just out (scroll down).

All benefits are up 6.6 percent on June 2024. Jobseeker is up 10 percent year on year.

Significantly, the rise in those people on a Jobseeker benefit due to a health or disability condition has increased by 15.4 percent. That points to a health system that is continuing to under-perform.

Talking to Heather du Plessis-Allan on NewstalkZB this morning Christopher Luxon said that his party is trying to pull NZ out of a recession worse than any since 1991 - he reiterated this minutes later saying the recession is the worst since the early 1990s and is worse than the GFC.

This is his new line. Watch out for it.

This is an adjustment - a new explanation - because the economy is not improving anywhere near as fast as he had hoped or it needs to.

At half-time National is struggling to make a real difference to voter's lives.

That's what the polls are saying.

New Zealand needs him to do better. Because another innings for Labour, with the Greens and Te Pati Maori, would be a disaster.

Source: https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/monthly-reporting/

Is there a relationship between marriage rates and welfare dependence?

With new data available from the 2023 census, it is possible to answer questions that contemporary policy makers seem disinterested in.

Earlier I posed the question, Who relies most heavily on welfare?

The following graph replicates ethnic benefit data and adds marriage data. Is there a relationship between marriage rates and welfare dependence? It would appear so.

Generally speaking, the higher the married portion of an ethnic group is, the lower the likelihood of relying on welfare, be it unemployment, sole parent or sickness benefits.

In New Zealand it is very unfashionable to praise marriage as an institution. Perhaps because marriage is viewed as patriarchal and Christian? On the other hand, marriages provide the stable and safe child-rearing economic units upon which successful societies are built. Marriage also requires commitment, which filters through to other aspects of people's lives.

And yet, overall, marriage rates are declining - a trend that does not bode well for the future.

Who relies most heavily on welfare?

This short piece is a partial answer to the question posed. It addresses the ‘who’ but not the ‘why’.

The following chart uses Census data from Statistics NZ and benefit data from MSD. Both sets are from March 2023.

At that time there were 345,417 individuals reliant on a main benefit which primarily comprised Jobseeker (formerly Unemployment and Sickness benefits), Supported Living Payment (formerly Invalid benefit) and Sole Parent Support (formerly DPB). By April 2025 the total had risen to 399,792.

Chinese people had the lowest dependency rate at 2.4 percent. The highest rate is for Māori at 23 percent. Each of the Asian rates is very low, as is the Latin American. The Pacific rates are middling to high, headed by Cook Island Māori at 19.8 percent.

Another way to answer the question is that 1 in 40 Chinese receive a main benefit versus 1 in 5 Cook Island Māori.

Limitations

In deriving the dependency percentage, the chart uses the 15–64-year-old population as the denominator (18–64-year-old data was not readily available.) The benefit data however applies to 18–64-year-olds. The denominator is therefore larger than it should be meaning that the percentages are somewhat understated.

Because the Pacific and Māori populations are relatively young, the denominator distortion will be greater. For instance, the median age for Māori is 26.8 whereas the median age for Chinese is 36.2. Therefore, the derived percentages for younger populations are more understated than those for the older populations. The younger populations have proportionately higher numbers in the 15,16- and 17-year-old age-band.

With both sets of data “people can identify with more than one ethnic group, and are counted for each ethnic group they identify with.”

 

Sources 

https://tools.summaries.stats.govt.nz/

https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/monthly-reporting/archive/2023-archives-index.html

The Death of Personal Responsibility

The following quote typifies the thinking that's rampant across New Zealand's health and education sectors:

    "The presentation of comparisons between different ethnic groups is not to provide commentary on the deficits of any particular ethnic group but rather to highlight the deficits of a society that creates, maintains and tolerates these differences."

It's never the fault of an individual that he or she is under-achieving or obese; absent from school or drug-addicted. It is society that has let them down. 

This collectivisation cop-out has developed over many decades.

A close cousin - non-judgementalism -  first started to grind my gears when, as a community volunteer, I was expected to embrace its inherent virtuosity. Yet we all make judgements constantly. From childhood we learn through the process of comparing and drawing conclusions. Perhaps if advised to 'not judge a book by its cover' I would accept that as a commonsense caution. But to suspend judgment totally is to deny one's intelligence and humanity. It negates our values. But non-judgementalism is rife in the social work sector.

James Payne, author of "Overcoming Welfare", wrote:

    "Today's social workers have genuinely internalized  a value-free approach. Instead of guiding clients away from foolish choices they set up systems that reinforce them."

Michael Bassett's recent piece highlighted a prime example of this in the DPB.

Another astute writer and observer of modern-day mangy thinking, Theodore Dalrymple, described how his prison hospital interns from third world countries would eventually come to the realisation that "a system of welfare that makes no moral judgements in allocating economic rewards promotes anti-social egotism. The spiritual impoverishment of the population seems to them worse than anything they have ever known in their own countries."

Denying the importance of morality is muddleheaded. The suspension of judgement prevents reasoning. (In any event to criticise someone for making a moral judgement is in and of itself a moral judgement.)

But if otherwise intelligent people are not allowed to look at a problem and at least consider personal responsibility as a factor then all they are left with is deterministic nonsense ie nobody has freewill or agency. They are mere victims of greater forces beyond their control.

Amongst the most evil of those 'greater forces' is the highly fashionable 'inequities'. On Monday a report was released about New Zealand's high rate of femicide. It contained the following statement:

    "We identified inequities in the rates of family violence homicide for wāhine and kōtiro Māori compared with non-Māori women and girls between 2018 and 2022 (see ‘The inequitable impact of femicide on Māori’). Had these inequities not existed, there would be approximately 25 more wāhine and kōtiro Māori alive today."

It would be just as true to claim that had these inequities not existed there would be many more non-Maori females dead today. It's just silly guilt-tripping. But again blame is laid with the intangible culprit 'societal inequities' rather than actual perpetrators.

What is it that academics and public servants are afraid of? That the consequences of enforced personal responsibility would drive worse outcomes? It's hard to imagine.

Or that their livelihoods would be threatened by a functioning country inhabited by mainly well-educated, healthy, independent, free-thinking and productive individuals?

https://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Our-work/Mortality-review-committee/FVDRC/Publications-resources/Femicide-Deaths-resulting-from-gender-based-violence-in-Aotearoa-New-Zealand.pdf

https://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Our-work/Mortality-review-committee/PMMRC/Publications-resources/16thPMMRCReport_FINAL.pdf

Is 'by Maori for Maori' shifting the dial?

On June 18, 2025, Health New Zealand published extensive data (March 2025 quarter) in a two-page spread contained in The Post. I assume this was replicated in other New Zealand newspapers. Included were childhood immunisation rates. 

At the bottom of the table for full immunisation at 24 months are Northland and Tairawhiti districts (improving trend) followed by Bay of Plenty and Waikato (worsening trend). These regions all have high Maori populations.

Next, 38 Primary Healthcare Organisations are listed and their rates of full immunisation at 24 months provided. Again, here are the bottom four:

          Hauraki PHO (Waikato) 58%

Nga Mataapuna Oranga Ltd (Bay of Plenty) 55.6%

Eastern Bay Primary Health Alliance (Bay of Plenty) 52.5%

Ngati Porou Hauora Charitable Trust (Tairawhiti) 38.5%

Very young children have routinely been immunised against measles since the 1970s, more latterly as part of the MMR vaccination. But measles is on the rise again and there’s considerable concern about an outbreak in this country due to pockets of very low vaccination coverage. Right now, Texas is experiencing an outbreak and there are direct flights between Houston and Dallas, and Auckland (a gateway to anywhere in NZ).

Two years ago, describing the coverage then as “dangerously low,” a Maori collective was formed to specifically focus on improving tamariki immunisation rates. 

A press release from May 10, 2025, said:

The Collective states that,

‘By engaging whanau with a kaimanaaki-led service of, “by Māori for Māori”, the barriers can be overcome with:

- Consistent service and trusted relationships (genuine, familiar, relatable, culturally appropriate, and high quality)

- Mātauranga Māori, a mana-enhancing approach alongside Western knowledge systems

- Information without judgment or coercion

- Shared values and connections that support vaccination and engagement with healthcare.

The Maori partners forming the collective are "Ora Toa, Ngā Mataapuna Oranga, Hauraki PHO, and Ngāti Porou Hauora". With the exception of Ora Toa (Wellington) the others all fall in the bottom four PHOs for full immunisation by 24 months.

Despite best intentions, the "by Maori for Maori" Matauranga Maori approach is not shifting the dial. In Bay of Plenty and Waikato the coverage is worsening.

Maybe in time it will?

But with the threat of a measles outbreak imminent, time is probably a luxury Maori cannot afford. While the expected fatality rate in developed nations is only around 1 in 1,000 there is a serious risk of hospitalisation and long-lasting complications. It is also entirely possible that the fatality rate would be higher in low income, isolated communities.