Penny Simmonds: Associate Social Development Minister on the growing number of people receiving a benefit

In the past 12 months, there has been a rise of 22,000 people claiming the job seeker benefit. 

Economists are predicting the numbers are set to continue rising. 

Associate Social Development Minister Penny Simmons says she is not surprised by the statistics. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
F new numbers back home around those having trouble with work.

(00:02):
So in the past year there's been a twelve percent
increase in the number of people getting jobs seecret that's
twenty two thousand people size of ash Burton. If you
want an example, Associates Social Development Minister Penny Simmons is Will.
There's Penny morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
And the sad thing about this is the economists to
write it hasn't picked. There's more to come.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, that's right, and we knew that second numbers were
going to get worse before they got better. We knew
that when we set our target or reducing that by
fifty thousand, jomping numbers by twenty thirty and that's why
we've been so focused on growing the economy. And it
was great listening to talking to Todd great news over

(00:40):
the weekend that started talks on the Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement,
because it's that sort of really focused, great work that
Tom McKay has been doing that is helping our economy
because we need to grow our economy. We need to
grow jobs so that we can get people off the
job seeker benefits and into work and you know, most

(01:03):
people on the Job Seeker Benefit want to be working,
and so that's why it's really important that we're gearing
up the welfare system to make the most of forecast improvements.
And the economic growth is forecasted to improve over the year,
and we want to make sure that mESC is really
to go and individual individuals on the Job Seeker Benefit

(01:27):
are ready and ready to go as those jobs come online.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Because job secret you are meant to be job ready.
Do you have a detailed breakdown on skills in location?
In other words, do you have a lot of people
in the wrong part of the country or along people
with a lot of people with the wrong skills and
we need to retrain or not.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yes, So it's variable across the country. It's lower in
the South Island and so the gross is occurring in
the South Island and on the back of the primary
sector and tourism come back, and so we know that
there are areas where it may be skill shortages sooner
than others, so we need to It's not an exact science,

(02:08):
and it's very difficult often to get particularly young ones
to move and and young people at twenty five are
disproportionately effect by being on the job seeker, high numbers
being on job seeker.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, OK, and you appreciate it very much, Pendry someons
who's the Associate Social Welfare or Social Development Minister. For
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