JD
In a time when employers are crying out for workers, it’s interesting to analyse the unemployment statistics, always recognising that the figures themselves are something of a farce given what is or isn’t considered when they are compiled.
For example, if you haven’t looked for a job in the past month you are not counted. Two-thirds of the people on the Jobseeker allowance are not counted. Cut your neighbour’s hedge for $10 beer money? You’re not counted. Help a relative for an hour, unpaid, you’re not counted. The list goes on and on.
The official unemployment numbers claim there are only 118,000 people supposedly unemployed, out of an estimated labour force of 3,037,000 Kiwis who supposedly wish to work.
However, if you count the tens of thousands of potential job seekers not fitting the narrow official definition of unemployed, and the other two-thirds of people getting the Jobseeker allowance who don’t fit either, then the actual unemployment rate in NZ is two to three times higher than the reported figure.
Which brings us to the key question on Jobseeker, and all of the other government handouts tempting the Kiwi workforce not to bother: where do all these Jobseekers come from?
Currently, Jobseeker numbers stand above 181,000, roughly 6% of the working-age population, compared to only 3.9% considered to be unemployed?? Go figure. I can’t.
This number includes 105,000 people who are “work ready” and 77,000 others who claim to have a health condition or disability (which presumably prevents them from working – so how they can be ‘seeking a job’ under those handicaps is yet another mystery).
Of the 105,000 healthy job seekers, more than half have been “work ready” for more than a year, including 11,000 who have been existing in this state of limbo for more than five years, and so the mystery compounds futher.
So the question is, can we analyse exactly who are these people diligently searching for employment, for years and years, in an economy desperate for workers, and why don’t they just get a job?
Firstly, we can lay some blame on the promise that a higher education will buy you a better life.
Once upon a time, someone, somewhere, noticed that people in higher income brackets tend to have university qualifications and concluded that having a degree makes you richer, so everyone should get one.
Not surprisingly, those who determined this were in the business of selling education, so the obvious remark, “They would reach this conclusion, wouldn’t they?” springs to mind.
Interestingly, no one thought to publicise the equally plausible alternative reality. Namely that people aren’t wealthy because they get a degree, rather that they get a degree because they or their families are wealthy in the first place.
Despite the latter more logical conclusion, we have now bought into the first premise. Consequently, university enrollments are up 400 per cent since 1980 and include many students pursuing degrees which have little or no relevance to the real world.
Then, believing that wealth must accrue as they have been assured, they wait after graduation for jobs to match their achievements. Achievements in media studies, performing arts, printmaking, gender studies or art theory, to name but a few of the many obscure courses on offer.
A few such jobs exist, of course, but with an attitude of “having the degree must mean I’m entitled to the job I want, so I’ll wait”, we see the result: a disproportionately high 35% of work-ready Jobseeker Kiwis in the 20-to-29-year age group.
The claim that higher education means higher earnings is a myth – just ask your local plumber or electrician – but it clearly doesn’t stop many Kiwis from pursuing the higher education promise, and then living off the taxpayer whilst they wait for it to be fulfilled.
A second factor in the makeup of the Jobseeker list is that of NZ’s favourite boogymen, the gangs. There are close to 9000 ‘patched’ members, plus their partners, the “wahine toa” of these gangsters, together with many other assorted ‘prospects’ and hangers-on.
As the idea of ‘working for the man’ is anathema to anyone seeking the mana accruing to gang membership or association, it is logical to assume that at least 20,000 of the long-term Jobseeker cohort must come from this group of Kiwis. A figure that will only continue to grow.
Finally, we come to a third consideration, namely that our attitudes to work and personal responsibility have permanently shifted away from the “Protestant work ethic” the country is built on.
Currently, a staggering 11% of working-age Kiwis are receiving one or more of the main social security benefits on offer, and this figure has gradually increased from little more than 2% in the 1970s.
Now, some would say it is to be expected as the increasing stress of modern living impinges on the delicate and entitled psyche of today’s generation. But it’s also indicative of the shift in public opinion. Where ‘Dole Bludger’ was once a term of derision inviting social ostracism, the title ‘Beneficiary’ is now more often a badge of approval bestowed on anyone who can game the system.
It used to be that the real-world social interaction necessary to live any sort of life demanded sufficient earnings to fund that interaction. Now it is entirely possible to live an ‘Internet life’ never venturing far from one’s keyboard, and living, often in the parental basement, sleepout or garage, on far fewer funds than an outgoing life requires.
Once this state of being is embraced, with all of one’s necessary excitements coming from video gaming and keyboard-warrior activities, the idea of moving out into some inconvenient job, with its travel times, fixed hours and face-to-face skill requirements, becomes inconceivable. The result is a group of internet dropouts who constitute the final cohort of non-work-ready, long-term, taxpayer-supported jobseekers.
As the overall Jobseeker and Beneficiary recipient number gradually but inexorably increases and the ship of state sinks slowly under the weight, I fear we must eventually reach the end point first postulated by the Scottish lawyer Alexander Fraser Tytler over two hundred years ago:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
