This headline in today's DomPost is highly questionable.
The article continues,"10,000 women lost their jobs in the last 3 months".
Yet the Statistics NZ release says, "The decrease (in employment) of 9,000 over the quarter was wholly due to falls in female full-time and female part-time employment.....Unemployment rose by 4,000 over the quarter....this movement was wholly driven by an increase in male unemployment."
So the women no longer working are not unemployed which rather suggests they have other means of support, probably a partner. They might have 'lost' their jobs or alternatively, they may have decided not to work. Why? Because as I suggested yesterday, the Working For Families assistance means they don't need to.
The DomPost article goes on to say,"Fewer jobs means overall spending is likely to slow down." Not necessarily, if my suggestion is correct.
What we need to know is the recent trend in WFF payments to see if there is a correlation with the drop in women employed. I'll see what I can find. But the WFF scheme is such a significant redistribution of wealth it has to be factored in to what is happening in the labour market.
The writer has overlooked the fact that women have a much greater degree of choice about work than men.
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I predicted before it came in to force that the WFF package would mean women who currently worked part-time would choose to stay home instead. Indeed, taking the cost of going to work and babysitting into account, these women are quite possible better off finacially NOT working.
However, I did expect some DBP beneficiaries to take up part-time work (20 hrs a week) so they qualified for WFF payments... making them much better off financially and allowing their kids to see them holding down a job.
The balance has obviously falllen more towards women leaving employment.
Isn't it fascinating watching how people will exploit as system... equally as fascinating to watch a government that pathologically relies on those flawed systems...
It's almost like they haven't heard of Occam's razor...
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