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# Benefit Numbers Continue Upward Trend
- URL: https://goodoil.news/benefit-numbers-continue-upward-trend/
- Published: 2020-01-23T22:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-19T17:07:13.000Z
- Author: Press Releases
- Tags: NZ, NZ Politics, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 03:24

Press Release: **Lindsay Mitchell**, Welfare commentator and researcher

The number of people on benefits has shot up 5 percent in the last year.

According to welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell [latest benefit fact sheets](https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/benefit/latest-quarterly-results/all-main-benefits.html?ref=goodoil.news), just released by MSD, show over 15,000 more people receiving a benefit than a year ago.

“Jobseeker numbers have risen by 10% while unemployment is still at a reasonably low level of just 4.2 percent.”

In its last Annual Report MSD said, *“The increase in demand for financial assistance this year has impacted on the time our case managers can spend with clients on proactive employment-focused case management: only 20 percent of engagements with clients in June 2019 had an employment focus, the lowest proportion since 2014.”*

“When I OIA’d the specifics of the decrease in employment-focused engagement I was told the percentage had fallen from 48% of ‘clients in service’ in June 2014 to just 20 percent by June 2019.”

While it is important to ensure that people’s immediate needs are met, grants are only short-term solutions. Jobs provide long-term answers but not enough time is being spent by case managers on that outcome.

*Lindsay Mitchell has been researching welfare since 2001\. She has written multiple papers for the NZBR and Family First, and her articles have appeared across newsprint media*

[lindsaymitchell.blogspot.co.nz](http://www.lindsaymitchell.blogspot.co.nz/?ref=goodoil.news)