New jobs bring some level of prosperity to individuals, families and in the wider sense to the community at large. FILE PHOTO
New jobs bring some level of prosperity to individuals, families and in the wider sense to the community at large. FILE PHOTO
GOOD news on the work front last week with confirmation online electricity retailer Powershop is expanding in Masterton and will greatly increase staff.
The company is reportedly planning to hire a further 45 or so staff, building on its existing 76. That's a welcome boost.
On a lesser scale, butnevertheless a welcome one, McDonald's in Chapel St has hired eight staff as the result of a new fast food innovation.
To state the obvious, new jobs bring some level of prosperity to individuals, families and in the wider sense to the community at large.
They bring hope and help to unhook young men and women from debilitating dependency on welfare payments and a hand-to-mouth existence.
Two of the most happy people to read of the expansion of Powershop must surely be Pim Borren, Masterton District Council chief executive, and his economic development manager Tina Nixon. Both, along with others, have had their shoulders to the wheel trying to create a better economic climate and hence more jobs.
To my mind that task, while admirable, must at times feel like being on a roller coaster. As jobs come on stream you go up and when a company sheds staff you head down. I suppose at the end of the day what you hope to achieve is a graph, that despite blips, edges higher over time.
Which brings me to the most prominent jobs graph Masterton has perhaps ever had, the barometer on the wall of the council building.
Townfolk could be excused for believing there has been no progress made at all judging by the barometer as it seems the needle has become stuck somewhere between zero and 50.
The barometer was apparently only intended to record jobs created and not to record the ebb and flow of the district's day-to-day workforce. In other words, jobs lost do not register and, I suppose, it would be impossible to actually plot every single job either gained or lost every single day or week.
In hindsight the barometer is probably a bit ambitious in that it is calibrated in 50-lot increments. Maybe it would be better to reduce that to increments of 10 or 20 with a top of 100, otherwise it may be an awfully long time before we hit the high note of 500 jobs created.
