New Zealand currently has an appalling youth unemployment rate: according to the latest Household Labour Force Survey, 65,700 people aged between 15 and 24 are unemployed - 17.4% of the total. Faced with a problem of this scale, you'd expect the government to be doing something about it. But their response is absolutely underwhelming. To help out the 65,700 unemployed young people, they're funding an extra 326 places in employment schemes. That's less than one place for every twenty people who needs one. Meanwhile, they've slashed training and capped tertiary places, meaning that young people have little option other than the dole.
Heckuva job, National. Great to see you're solving with our problems rather than ignoring them.
