58,000 unemployed under National

The Household Labour Force Survey is out, and while it shows some improvement from last quarter's disastrous figure, unemployment is still at 6.9%. There are still 163,000 people unemployed - 58,000 more than when National took office.

And while there has been a drop in the number of unemployed, its not because National has been creating jobs. The number of people in employment actually dropped by 24,000. Meanwhile, the number of people who are not in the workforce rose by 46,000. National is "reducing unemployment" the same way it is reducing benefit numbers: by forcing people to give up and stop bothering.

If this is National's version of economic success, I'd hate to see what failure looks like.