With the national unemployment rate sitting at 5.6% but skewing much higher for young people, the Green Party has released a policy it hopes could resolve youth unemployment, Parker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the weekend, they came out with a programme called Jobs for Young People, which they say would be modelled on the Jobs for Nature scheme that ran during Covid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would entail paying the wages of every New Zealander aged 16 to 24 who\u2019s been out of work for six months or more.<\/p>\n
The programme would find jobs for young people with councils, iwi, businesses, the private sector, and non-profits, the Green Party said.<\/p>\n
Parker said the downside was that the policy was \u201cpotentially quite expensive\u201d, costing $4.9 billion over four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of young people of young people out of work at the moment, NZIER data came out over the weekend and according to that, around a quarter of 15- to 19-year-olds are unemployed.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the left, politicians are arguing the Government hasn\u2019t done enough to stimulate the economy and create employment.<\/p>\n
On the right, politicians argue that a high minimum wage and other regulatory issues in the labour market are a constraint on hiring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of things around the margins on productivity that you might say affect the labour market longer term, but I think right now it is part of a cyclical slump,\u201d Dann said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesses are not investing and expanding. The New Zealand population is not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, net migration was low, so the population wasn\u2019t growing and the money that was coming into the country via strong export returns was not going into industries that employed large numbers of people, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think until you start to see manufacturing businesses and service sector businesses getting confident enough to invest, we\u2019re still some way away, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most economists don\u2019t see any material improvement in the labour market appearing until 2027.<\/p>\n
Unemployment is typically one of the last economic indicators to improve in a recovery cycle, Dann said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about your typical first job, it\u2019s usually in that retail or hospitality area,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if they\u2019re not hiring, then it\u2019s pretty tough for young people to get a job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 1000 applicants for the meatpacking job was \u201can awful story\u201d, Dann said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess that\u2019s the low end of the butchery world and perhaps it might lead to a butchery apprenticeship or something like that, but it just struck me that you don\u2019t apply for a job like that unless you really want to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying butchery is a terrible job, you know, everyone loves great cuts of meat. But it\u2019s not easy work. You\u2019re talking about an intense job that probably isn\u2019t incredibly well-paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo get 1000 people who are that keen, it makes me wonder about a lot of the stuff you\u2019re hearing from National and Act about [beneficiaries] not wanting to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at the other end of the economy, the NZ Herald this week ran a restaurant review about a $400 steak, Parker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right. So this is a place in Auckland that\u2019s got the license to sell authentic Kobe wagyu beef,\u201d Dann said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo somewhere out there, there are people who are prepared to pay $400 for the best steak in the world in Auckland.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is still wealth in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, on our steak-based scale, that\u2019s two very different ends of the spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week, Parker and Dann also look at fuel prices \u2013 and why they are cheaper in Australia. <\/p>\n
Listen to the full episode<\/a> for the complete conversation.<\/p>\n