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Another 26,000 'will be unemployed' before peak reached (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 6 months ago by BalpeenHammer to c/politics

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Surely all these people losing decent paying jobs will have no impact on the economy right? Definitely not a recession right?

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[–] Dave 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

‘Jobseeker’ rolled up all the old benefits into one, so there are people with disabilities who can’t work at all counted in those figures.

Yeah this is the benefit confusion I alluded to, and I was wondering if this was the case. I think things like what I think was called the Sickness Benefit is now part of the Jobseeker support benefit, despite having no requirement to look for work.

The underutilisation rate is arguably a better measure, as it includes unemployed but also people who want more work but can’t find it.

Digging into this, the unemployment rate went from 3.4% to 4.3% between March 2023 and March 2024.

The underutilisation rate went from 9.1% to 11.2% in the same time period.

I haven't managed to find data from before 2010 for underutilisation so it's hard to see the historically normal level.

[–] Xcf456 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

2010 was when underutilisation started being collected.

What I was getting at though was that a historically normal level of unemployment is tricky to work out as the measure itself has changed over time, in part because the labour market has changed.

There are far more part time, casual, flexible roles today so even when the labour market gets worse, people may still be working some hours so they don't show up in unemployment stats, but they do in underutilisation. Employment has only been counted like this since (I think) the late 90s so it's not directly comparable to before then.

[–] Dave 2 points 6 months ago

That makes sense. It's tricky with any survey data really. Over time the helpful question to be asking changes, so you can't really compare points that are far apart in time.