Nicola Willis: Finance Minister on the unemployment rate remaining at 5.1%

The Finance Minister admits many Kiwis aren't getting as much work as they'd like to be. 

Unemployment has remained unchanged at 5.1% in the March quarter, despite most economists predicting a rise. 

However, 21% of employed people are now working part time. 

Nicola Willis told Mike Hosking the ongoing rise in the under-utilisation rate is a concern. 

She says it's clear that some people are going into part time work rather than full time work, and aren't working as many hours as they'd like to be. 

Willis says she'd like to see those numbers improving. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jobless number came out yesterday. Surprised to the upside as
the number turned out to be five point one, which
is better than the big brains were thinking they had
five point two five point three. Full time work was
down forty five thousand, offset to some degree by the
growth and part time work. Finance Minister Nicola willis with us.
Good morning, Good morning mate. What are your spidy sensors saying?
Is this it?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well? Treasury have been forecasting that they expect unemployment to
peak later this year and to start coming down. And
that's what I still think is going to happen, because
we do have an economic recovery underway. We had GDP
growing in the last quarter of last year and generally
what that means is soon enough unemployment starts following.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, I'd like to think that was true. I've got
bad news for you. I'm doing the live GDP this morning.
They've got us down on the quarterly change and the
annual change down a minus zero point one for the quarter.
So maybe this growth thing isn't happening the way we
thought it was.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, what we know is that consumer confidence and business
confidence has been recovering, but at the same time all
of these international events have definitely had an impact on
people's views about how the economy is going to go,
and therefore how much they're investing, and therefore their readiness
to take on new workers and all of those sorts
of things. So I think with the uncertainty that we're having,

(01:15):
we could see that these numbers going up and down
a little bit. But as I say, Treasury and others
continue to forecast that the economic recovery is underway, just
not quite as fast as we were all hoping.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Do you worry about the under utilization rate and do
you worry about the young people who can't get work?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Of course I always do. I want to see young
people getting into work. What the data indicates is that
there are more young people going into study rather than
work at the moment. But there are two sides to
the data yesterday. On the one hand, it's always good
to see unemployment lower than the boffins are forecasting. On
the other hand, it's clear that some people are going
into part time work rather than full time work and

(01:53):
aren't getting as many hours of work as they would
like to be. So I want to see all of
those numbers improving.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Barbara Edmonds yesterday busy blaming you for not spending enough money,
and as easily as we can dismiss this, it is
a political argument. How much of this recovery relies on
the Edmunds recipe of you spending money versus the rest
of us getting out and actually doing something about it.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's about everyone feeling confident in the business community and
in the private sector that they can invest, do things,
take on new markets. That's how recoveries happen. New Zealand
at the moment is spending more than it is earning
by a huge proportion. In fact, compared to other countries
in the world, our government is doing more of that

(02:36):
than many many others. So to say that the way
to get our economic recovery is just to drive this
country into even deeper debt, I think is financially and
economically ignorant. That is not the way. Recoveries come from
businesses feeling confident, feeling that the future is a good
place they can invest, they can hard people conditions. We're
trying to see it.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's not in your area specifically, but you're the most
senior minister we've got today and Upston were in Rogaru yesterday,
this tourism thing. You removed one of those barriers, those
language barriers for visas into this country. I told you
many people told you about this months ago being a
hurdle and an impediment to getting tourism growth. It was
only yesterday. Why are you guys so slow at this stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, look, our initial advice was that there were a
number of risks worth doing that, and then we've sat
down and we've looked carefully through it, and we've determined
that this is a change that we can make and
we should make because it will support more tourists coming
to the country.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, but we told you that months ago.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yes, you did, but we had to weigh all of
the evidence, and we had to weigh the advice that
we were getting from our officials saying that they did
think that there were risks to this. We've weighed that
we've made an appropriate decision.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Appreciate you time. Nicola Willis the Finance Ministers. For more
from The Mike Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks
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