16 firms a week seek Winz help over layoffs

Paula Bennett says her weekly updates tell her the labour market is still moving. Photo / Mark Mitchell

An average of 16 firms a week have sought help from Work and Income to handle staff layoffs over the past seven weeks - with about 250 workers potentially affected each week.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says despite the numbers seeking help, numerous workers are getting new jobs reasonably swiftly - many before they have to go on a benefit.

Unemployment is forecast to reach 7.5 per cent in the next year and Ms Bennett now gets weekly updates from Winz to keep track of how the labour market is coping - and she believes there is still hope of re-employment for many made redundant.

"What it's telling us is that the labour market is still moving. It's once everything starts freezing up and people leave their jobs because of redundancies but can't get other jobs that we start to worry, but that isn't showing at the moment," she said.

By the end of last month, 973 people had signed up for the new "ReStart" programme, which provides 16 weeks of extra help with accommodation supplement and Working for Families payments plus the benefit for lower-income workers who lose their jobs.

Of those, just 62 had so far found new jobs before their entitlements were due to end.

But as of Friday Work and Income still had about 5000 jobs on its books and last week 2019 people had gone off benefits - up from 1493 in the same week last year - indicating they were taking up seasonal jobs.

Although Winz could do little to stem layoffs, Ms Bennett said, it was trying to work early with companies that were shedding staff to try to secure new jobs for the staff affected.

She said one example was that of the 430 workers affected by Fisher and Paykel's decision to move manufacturing offshore, none had yet applied for benefits - indicating Winz efforts to help them find work elsewhere by holding a "workshop" for other employers to recruit the staff had been successful.

Ms Bennett said her department had "ramped up" its work dealing with companies and staff hit by redundancies.

Its regional offices knew which businesses were losing workers and which needed new workers and linking the two was one of the top priorities of the department.

Her weekly updates reflected that there were other jobs out there as well.

About 37 per cent of those who made contact with Work and Income about getting a benefit did not end up doing so, mostly because they got other work although some were also ineligible.

Tomorrow, up to 50 of the ideas presented at the recent Job Summit will be divided among Government ministers to work on further.

Ms Bennett is expected to be one of those assigned to work on the nine-day working fortnight.