Craig Rennie: Council of Trade Unions Economist on the record number of beneficiaries

The number of people on a benefit has reached a new record and could keep rising, despite an uptick in sanctions. 

June quarter data shows 11.9% of working-age people are receiving a benefit - the highest since December 2020. 

It's an annual increase of 8.3%. 

Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Rennie told Ryan Bridge the number of people on Jobseeker will keep rising. 

He said unemployment is always a bad thing, as the more people working means there are more households with money in their pockets, and poverty starts to fall.  

Rennie said that unemployment is never a thing you should be aiming for, it’s always something you should be avoiding. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The number of people on a benefit has risen to
a new record for the June quarter. That's three hundred
and eighty one thousand people, an increase of twenty nine
thousand from the same time last year. And get this,
this is the job seeker numbers, those are ready for work,
one hundred and thirteen thousand people, up nearly fifteen percent
year on year. The number of benefit sanctions issued by

(00:21):
the Ministry of Social Development is also up fifty percent
on the same time last year. Craig Rennie is an
economist and policy director for the Council of Trade Unions.
He's with me this morning. Craig, good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
First of all, what's your reaction to the numbers. I mean,
it's going to keep going up the number of people
on the jobs you could benefit, right, because of the
state of the economy.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
You're absolutely right, And the number of people on the
toplic of benefit is going to keep rising. The Treasury
forecasts that the number of people who were reemployed will
rise by about forty seven thousand since since the Discoverment
has taken office, just because of the changing economic background,
but also we had record law unemployment until very recently

(01:03):
and so it's heading back into more normal territory.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
So is this a necessarily a bad thing? We kind
of need We kind of need this, don't we in
some ways to rebalance the economy and get the interest
rates down.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Unemployment is always a bad thing. The more people who
are in work, there are more households with more money
in their pockets, poverty falls, people are better off. Unemployment
is never a thing that you're trying to aim. It's
always something you should be trying to avoid. And the
best evidence of New Zealand is that the impact of
unemployment is felt far more than the impact of the

(01:40):
cost of living on households.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
I guess if you're the government, you're looking at you know,
let's take for example, the public service cuts. You're better off,
aren't you having people in jobs that don't produce outcomes.
You're better off having them on a benefit. You know,
what's the point in having somebody in a job if
there's no good outcome in terms of public service delivery
just for the sake of it.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
That may be too, but we don't have any evidence
that those workers who are sitting there just being fu
weren't actually delivering anything. We have quite the opposite. We
have lots of evidence that those who are losing their
jobs were doing front lane, often frontline work in New Zealand,
and there are actually many of the people we need
to have in the country. We're losing skills rapidly to overseas,

(02:26):
precisely because we're cutting jobs in some of these areas,
and we're going to make it much more difficult to
deliver the caames to public services we want to see
in New Zealand if we lose many of these people.
So there's no evidence to support the allegation, at least
that these people aren't doing anything a aren't contributing anything
to New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Craig. The sanctions on particularly those under twenty five, A
lot of who are about this yesterday, people saying it's terrible,
you know, particularly for the under twenty fives. Isn't it
important that they have clear expectations and consequences if they
don't meet them.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's very important that there's clear expectations and that those
expectations work both ways. That people are very clear as
to what they should be able to access, how they
should be able to get support. But there's also there's
also very clear that they use, that there are rules
that people have to abide by, but when we look
at the data, there does seem to have been a

(03:21):
really big shift in the number of assumptions that have
been delivered, particularly in this last quarter, and ext questions
of what's different now with what was happening just three
months ago.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Craig, thanks very much for your time. That's Craig Rinney
who's with the Council of Trade. Union's just gone for
more from news talks.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
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Speaker 1 (03:42):
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