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Speaker 1: The number of people on a benefit has risen to

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Speaker 1: a new record for the June quarter. That's three hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighty one thousand people, an increase of twenty nine

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Speaker 1: thousand from the same time last year. And get this,

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Speaker 1: this is the job seeker numbers, those are ready for work,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and thirteen thousand people, up nearly fifteen percent

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Speaker 1: year on year. The number of benefit sanctions issued by

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Speaker 1: the Ministry of Social Development is also up fifty percent

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Speaker 1: on the same time last year. Craig Rennie is an

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Speaker 1: economist and policy director for the Council of Trade Unions.

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Speaker 1: He's with me this morning. Craig, good morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning.

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Speaker 1: First of all, what's your reaction to the numbers. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's going to keep going up the number of people

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Speaker 1: on the jobs you could benefit, right, because of the

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Speaker 1: state of the economy.

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Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, And the number of people on the

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Speaker 2: toplic of benefit is going to keep rising. The Treasury

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Speaker 2: forecasts that the number of people who were reemployed will

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Speaker 2: rise by about forty seven thousand since since the Discoverment

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Speaker 2: has taken office, just because of the changing economic background,

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Speaker 2: but also we had record law unemployment until very recently

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Speaker 2: and so it's heading back into more normal territory.

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Speaker 1: So is this a necessarily a bad thing? We kind

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Speaker 1: of need We kind of need this, don't we in

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Speaker 1: some ways to rebalance the economy and get the interest

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Speaker 1: rates down.

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Speaker 2: Unemployment is always a bad thing. The more people who

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Speaker 2: are in work, there are more households with more money

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Speaker 2: in their pockets, poverty falls, people are better off. Unemployment

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Speaker 2: is never a thing that you're trying to aim. It's

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Speaker 2: always something you should be trying to avoid. And the

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Speaker 2: best evidence of New Zealand is that the impact of

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Speaker 2: unemployment is felt far more than the impact of the

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Speaker 2: cost of living on households.

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Speaker 1: I guess if you're the government, you're looking at you know,

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Speaker 1: let's take for example, the public service cuts. You're better off,

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Speaker 1: aren't you having people in jobs that don't produce outcomes.

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Speaker 1: You're better off having them on a benefit. You know,

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Speaker 1: what's the point in having somebody in a job if

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Speaker 1: there's no good outcome in terms of public service delivery

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Speaker 1: just for the sake of it.

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Speaker 2: That may be too, but we don't have any evidence

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Speaker 2: that those workers who are sitting there just being fu

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Speaker 2: weren't actually delivering anything. We have quite the opposite. We

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Speaker 2: have lots of evidence that those who are losing their

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Speaker 2: jobs were doing front lane, often frontline work in New Zealand,

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Speaker 2: and there are actually many of the people we need

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Speaker 2: to have in the country. We're losing skills rapidly to overseas,

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Speaker 2: precisely because we're cutting jobs in some of these areas,

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Speaker 2: and we're going to make it much more difficult to

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Speaker 2: deliver the caames to public services we want to see

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Speaker 2: in New Zealand if we lose many of these people.

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Speaker 2: So there's no evidence to support the allegation, at least

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Speaker 2: that these people aren't doing anything a aren't contributing anything

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Speaker 2: to New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: Craig. The sanctions on particularly those under twenty five, A

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Speaker 1: lot of who are about this yesterday, people saying it's terrible,

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Speaker 1: you know, particularly for the under twenty fives. Isn't it

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Speaker 1: important that they have clear expectations and consequences if they

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Speaker 1: don't meet them.

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Speaker 2: It's very important that there's clear expectations and that those

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Speaker 2: expectations work both ways. That people are very clear as

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Speaker 2: to what they should be able to access, how they

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Speaker 2: should be able to get support. But there's also there's

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Speaker 2: also very clear that they use, that there are rules

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Speaker 2: that people have to abide by, but when we look

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Speaker 2: at the data, there does seem to have been a

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Speaker 2: really big shift in the number of assumptions that have

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Speaker 2: been delivered, particularly in this last quarter, and ext questions

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Speaker 2: of what's different now with what was happening just three

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Speaker 2: months ago.

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Speaker 1: Craig, thanks very much for your time. That's Craig Rinney

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Speaker 1: who's with the Council of Trade. Union's just gone for

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Speaker 1: more from news talks.

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Speaker 2: They'd be listen live on air or online and

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Speaker 1: Keep our shows with you wherever you go with our

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Speaker 1: podcast on iHeartRadio.