41,000 unemployed under National

The March labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has dropped slightly, to 5.3%. But there are still 163,000 people unemployed, 41,000 more than when National took office.

It ought to be clear by now that National's economy just isn't working. Yes, there are global crises. But everything they do - the austerity, the perpetual restructurings, the random cancellation of major projects because they were Labour's projects - just makes things worse. Its almost as if business dudes have no idea how government finance actually works, and don't really care, because they have a fat salary and a crony job waiting for them when they're de-elected. Meanwhile, everyone else gets to suffer for their mistakes.

If we want any of this to change, the message is clear: we need to de-elect the regime, and get a new government which will end austerity and stop fucking around and making us find out. Fortunately, we'll have a chance to do that in six months time.

43,000 unemployed under National

The December labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.4%. There are now 165,000 unemployed - 43,000 more than when National took office.

...which is what happens when you strangle public spending and crash the economy. Meanwhile National's Ministers enjoy their fat salaries of $304,300 a year (plus slush, plus housing, plus kiwisaver) while telling people to "economise on... the volume you eat". Maybe its time we ate the rich instead?

National has fucked the economy

National's core promise as a government is to be "better economic managers" (meaning: bald men in blue suits). And they made specific promises last election to return the government to surplus by the next election. So how's that working out for them? Terribly:

There is still no surplus in sight, according to Treasury’s latest economic forecasts.

Treasury sees the deficit deepening further, from $14.0 billion in the year to June 2025 to $16.9b in 2025/26, before narrowing to $60 million in 2029/30.

While this is an improvement from when Treasury last published forecasts at the May Budget, it still undershoots National’s pre-election pledge to return the books to surplus by 2026/27.

Unmentioned in any of the media coverage (which is all about surpluses and GDP and debt) but in the HYEFU is that unemployment still hasn't peaked and will remain high as far ahead as treasury is looking, while wages won't grow. So life is going to suck for normal people, no matter what the overall economy does.

And all because Nicola Willis crashed the economy by cutting everything and sacking everyone. Worse, she's promising more of the same, in a desperate effort to meet that self-imposed budget target.

The evidence is clear: things won't get better until we remove this government and replace it with one which understands that making things better requires investment, not cuts. The sooner the election, the better!

38,000 unemployed under National

The September labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen again to 5.3%. There are now 160,000 unemployed - 38,000 more than when National took office.

National's response to this disaster has been to throw people off benefits in a desperate effort to cut costs. But that doesn't actually help people get work - it just makes them suffer more. But what would a Minister on a $304,800 a year salary and an enormous tax-free pile of hoarded houses know or care about that?

Pointless cruelty

That is the only way to describe the regime's sudden policy to apply a parental income test to 18 and 19 year old jobseekers. Legally these people are adults, and their parents have no legal duty to support them. But apparently now they will be made dependent.

The ostensible purpose for this policy is to encourage 18 and 19 year olds to work. That's bullshit, and everyone knows it. The simple fact is that, thanks to National's engineered recession, there are no jobs. And even the people who Chris Luxon thinks 18 and 19 year olds should be working for say so.

(The real reason is to juke the stats so National can meet its self-imposed target to cut jobseeker numbers by 50,000. They can't do it by getting people into work, so they'll just throw them off benefits instead. And they will call this "success").

Cutting benefit eligibility when there are no jobs does not incentivise anything. It is nothing but an exercise in pointless cruelty. But it is so very, very National, isn't it? Its what they always do: blame and victimise the young, rather than admit that they fucked things up.

36,000 unemployed under National

The June labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment has risen to 5.2%. There are now 158,000 unemployed - 36,000 more than when National took office.

This is the highest level since Covid - and it will get worse, with ANZ suggesting it could rise by another 0.5% (another 15,000 people) as companies get the message that there is no economic recovery from this government. So much for "better economic managers"...

Still 34,000 unemployed under National

The March labour market statistics are out, showing unemployment unchanged at 5.1%. There are now 156,000 unemployed - 34,000 more than when National took office.

While better than expected, there's been a shift from full-time to part-time work, and total weekly paid hours has dropped - meaning people are working less, while nominally remaining in jobs. Underutilisation - people who would like to work more hours - is also up. So this isn't exactly good news. The questions is whether it will get worse, and how many people will throw in the towel and cross the Tasman for fairer work in response to National's misogynist attack on women.

34,000 unemployed under National

The December labour market statistics have been released, showing yet another increase in unemployment. There are now 156,000 unemployed - 34,000 more than when National took office.

And having thrown all these people out of work, National is doubling down on cruelty. Because being vicious will somehow magically create the jobs they and the Reserve Bank have destroyed or something. Or maybe its because they're just cruel, vicious arseholes bereft of empathy. But either way, its hard to see how it does any good whatsoever. These people aren't out of work because they're "lazy"; they're out of work because National has destroyed the economy. And being cruel isn't going to fix that.

26,000 unemployed under National

The latest labour market statistics have dropped, showing another rise in unemployment. There are now 148,000 unemployed - 26,000 more than when National took office.

...which is what happens when you sack thousands of public servants and have the Reserve Bank crash the economy. This is apparently the most severe per-capita recession in our history, and its completely self-inflicted for purely ideological reasons. What's scary is that this recession will have a body-count, measured both in direct suicides as well as ill-health. We need some way of holding the murderers who have inflicted it to account.

21,000 unemployed under National

The latest labour market statistics have dropped, showing another rise in unemployment. There are now 143,000 unemployed - 21,000 more than when National took office.

This is the result of a deliberate policy choice by both the government and the reserve bank to engineer a recession and throw people out of work to protect the value of rich people's money. And the fact that they've both chosen to do this, chosen to do nothing to moderate its impacts, and in fact chosen to make it worse by throwing public servants out of work (with a consequent flow-on effect on the Wellington economy) tells us an awful lot about their values.

14,000 unemployed under National

The latest labour market statistics have dropped, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low.

The previous government saw a modest decrease in unemployment, despite a significant increase in the size of the workforce. So this is a bad start for National, but it is early days yet. Still, they're unlikely to be as committed to keeping people in work as Labour were, so their number will probably get a lot worse.

5,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment had risen to 3.9%. So, at the end of their term, Labour had reduced unemployment by only 5,000 people compared to when they took office.

Of course, growth in the overall population and the workforce means the change is much more significant in percentage terms: a drop from 4.6% to 3.9%. Which I guess shows the problems of tracking this with absolute numbers.

(The December quarter stats, released next year, will cover the election period and interregnum, so I'm not really wanting to attribute it to either party. I'll start tracking National's tally with the 2024 March quarter).

14,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, and unemployment has risen slightly to 3.6%. There are now 109,000 unemployed - 14,000 fewer than when Labour took office.

So, so far the Reserve Bank has managed to throw all of 7,000 people out of work in its quest to protect the value of rich people's yacht money. Which seems to be fewer than they want to, so they'll probably keep trying to spread misery and hardship. Which really does make you wonder why we put up with them, rather than having an economic policy focused on protecting people, rather than money.

21,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment is stable at 3.4%. There are now 102,000 unemployed - 21,000 fewer than when Labour took office.

This is a good result, and it shows that there's some resistance to the Reserve Bank's policy of Brashing the economy and throwing people out of work to save corporate profits. But the bank has doubled down, and doubled down again, so it might not last.

24,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment has risen slightly to 3.4%. There are now 99,000 people unemployed - 24,000 fewer than when Labour took office.

So, I guess the Reserve Bank's plan to throw people out of work to stop wage rises "inflation", and victimise the most vulnerable in society to protect the abstract wealth of the uber-rich from eroding isn't working yet. Unfortunately, this probably means they'll just keep doubling down.

26,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing unemployment stable at 3.3%. There are now 97,000 unemployed - 26,000 fewer than when Labour took office.

So, I guess the bankers aren't getting what they want. Which means we can expect the howling for ordinary people to be thrown out of work to protect their profits to intensify.

There's more than one way to tame inflation

ANZ bank today reported a record profit of $2.3 billion - 0.6% of our total GDP going straight into the pockets of the rich. Meanwhile, their pet economists are explicitly demanding that thousands of people be thrown out of work to limit inflation:

New Zealand’s unemployment rate needs to increase to around 4.5% to stop adding pressure to inflation, ANZ’s economists say.

[...]

“To actually beat back inflation pressures, labour demand needs to fall. Rising unemployment is not a happy prospect for workers or for the housing market. But failing to get on top of inflation would lead to an economy that struggles to perform over the long term, with inflation eroding wealth and complicating long-term decision-making. What price are we willing to pay to avoid that?

What price indeed? Maybe those economists should be asking themselves that? And if they're serious in thinking that unemployment needs to rise for the sake of their precious economy, they should be the change they want to see in the world and quit, rather than demanding other people make sacrifices for their benefit.

More generally, these demands to increase unemployment to tame inflation are effectively a demand that ordinary people, rather than the rich, pay the price of economic stability. But why should we do that? Even assuming "economic stability" is a goal worth pursuing - and I'm not sure we should - there's more than one way to do it. The most obvious is to remove excess demand at the top, by taxing the rich of their excessive gains. Since ANZ wants inflation to reduce, they'll clearly have no objection to the government taking away half of their super-profit "for economic stability". And if they're not, its clear that they're just interested in waging class warfare against the poor, as usual.

Fuck the economy

Stuff reports that bank economists are saying that 50,000 people need to be thrown out of work to control inflation:

The current labour market was “very, very tight”, [ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner] said, and bringing down inflation required “some spare capacity” in the labour market.

It was a hard thing for the Reserve Bank to talk about, she said.

“It’s a difficult thing for them to talk about. To beat inflation, they require some people to lose their jobs. That’s a comms challenge right there,” she said.

Unemployment had not been this low since the 1980s, [head of private wealth at Craigs Investment Partners Mark] Lister said.

“You’ve got to cause some pain. You’ve got to create some unemployment,” he said.

The right's Big Lie has always been that what is good for the economy is good for everyone, and what is bad for it is bad for everyone. But if you've lived through the 80's, or the 90's, or the GFC, or Covid, you know that that simply isn't true. What's "good for the economy" only ever means what is good for the rich. Meanwhile, it tends to be very, very bad for everyone else. But if the price of protecting the value of the rich's hoarded wealth and stopping it from evaporating is to throw 50,000 people out of work and 50,000 families on the breadline, then I say "fuck the economy". Let it burn. We shouldn't pay to protect their privilege. And the politicians elected by our votes shouldn't try and make us (not if they want to keep their jobs).

And while we're at it, do you know what's deflationary, but doesn't throw 50,000 people out of work or cause a recession? Taxing rich people. Wealth taxes. Highly progressive income taxes. A windfall tax on excessive bank profits. But for some reason, we won't see economists pushing for those solutions. Which simply underlines how much of the profession are simply ideological mercenaries for the rich, who exist solely to wage class warfare against everyone else.

27,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing unemployment has risen slightly to 3.3%. There are now 96,000 unemployed - 27,000 fewer than when Labour took office.

The media narrative around this release has been... interesting. Unemployment was predicted to be as low as 2.8%, causing panic from the rich. Unemplyment is Bad, it seems, unless there's "not enough" of it and wages are rising, in which case its time for the Reserve bank to throw people out of work and the government to attract cheap foreign labour to keep those uppity workers under control. Which tells you who policy is made for, and it isn't ordinary kiwis.

29,000 employed under Labour

The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing unemployment holding at a record low of 3.2%. There are now 94,000 unemployed - 29,000 fewer than when Labour took office.

Average wages are also up, and looking back, they've increased from $30.45 / hour in 2017 to $36.18 today. Which is still running quite nicely ahead of inflation. Though the CPI has been higher for the past year, and people are going to be wanting compensation for that, so I guess we can expect much squealing from business about "wage inflation" and "labour costs" and the "need" to be subsidised by cheap immigrant labour - in other words, for workers to pay the price rather than them. Which is not something a decent country should let them get away with.