Benefits stats and some aberrations

 Here's National on the March quarter benefit stats:

Labour Mislead on Negative Statistics Again

Labour’s celebratory social media posts touting a “record 32,880 people moved into work” are disingenuous and only tell one part of the story, National’s Social Development & Employment spokesperson Louise Upston says.

“What Labour aren’t telling us, is that more people were put on a benefit than moved into work across the same time period. That’s 46,437 additional people moving on to benefits.

Yes, it is correct that 46,437 grants of benefits occurred during the March 2021 quarter.

But during the same period there were 60,573 cancellations of benefits.

That's net 14,136 fewer people on benefits. And for a March quarter 32,880 moving into work is a record for the last 6 years. 

That is what Labour is crowing about.

Now if you want to make comparisons to when Labour took office, or the degree of dependence in respect of how long people are staying on benefits, that's another matter....

 If I was putting a question to the minister I'd be asking what happened to the blue lines. Why no cancellations due to benefit reviews or health improvements?

I went into the data tables for a look:

Something very odd about those two categories.

As far as I am aware benefits are still reviewed annually. Most have to be re-applied for after 52 weeks.  And one assumes that a failure to present a medical certificate for  benefit requiring one would typically lead to X amount of cancellations as per past March quarters.

Maybe some porcedures went West during Covid and just haven't been reinstated since.