February 08, 2018
No room for ease in jobless figure
Employment Minister Willie Jackson says the Government is looking beyond the statistics as it tries to pick up people who have been pushed to the margins.
The latest Household Labour Force Survey puts unemployment down at 4.5 percent, the lowest since December 2008.
Average ordinary time weekly earnings increased by 3.1 percent for full-time equivalent employees in the year to December 2017.
But Mr Jackson told Radio Waatea host Dale Husband the unemployment and under-utilisation rates for Maori are still significantly higher than the general population.
As well as the 122,000 people are part-timers wanting more hours, there are further 99,000 people who want work, but are either not actively looking or not immediately available for work for various reasons.
"We are hardly going to sit back and say things are good because when things were at the best under the previous National Government we still had people missing out, our (Maori) people missing out, women missing out, young people missing out, disabled people missing out. This is a Government that is for all people and I am determined to come up with an employment strategy that embraces everyone," Mr Jackson says.
The strategy needs to address places like Northland and the East Coast where there are high levels of unemployment.
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