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Video / Jed Bradley / Mark Mitchell / George Heard / Michael Craig / Dean Purcell
A calculation error on the part of the Government means vaccine mandates cover a quarter fewer people than initially believed.
It means the percentage of people covered by a Government mandate is just 30 per cent, not 40 per cent like the Government initially said.
Last year, Workplace Relations andSafety Minister Michael Wood announced the vaccine mandate system that would operate under traffic light system. At the time, about 15 per cent of the workforce was mandated.
These people were Government workers, people who worked at the border, in MIQ, health, education and Corrections.
The system announced in October meant that anyone working at a business where customers were required to show vaccine certificates needed to be vaccinated themselves.
Announcing the system in October, both Wood and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this would bring the total number of people covered by Government mandates to "around 40 per cent in total".
However, in December, Wood's office queried officials on that calculation, and emailed the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to double-check it. Those emails were released under the Official Information Act after a query from Infometrics Economist Brad Olsen who was also curious about the figure.
"There's been some discussion in the office about the percentage of the workforce covered by the current mandates. The number that's often referred to is 40 per cent. Can you confirm that's still correct?" a staffer asked.
Far fewer people are covered by vaccine mandates than first thought. Photo / NZME
MBIE wrote back acknowledging there'd been an error and that excluding the police and the defence force "that figure should be 30 per cent. The October Cabinet paper said 40 per cent because of a calculation error on our part".
A breakdown of the figures shows about 414,100 people working at the border, in MIQ, health, education and corrections, or 14.9 per cent of the workforce.
And a further 420,900 working in tertiary education, health and fitness, events, hospitality, or in "close proximity" businesses, comprising 15.2 per cent of the workforce.
MBIE reckons those figures may even overestimate the number of people covered by mandates.
Olsen said he requested documents on the calculations after being curious as to how officials arrived at the figures.
"The public discourse is that the Government has mandated every job in the country to be vaccinated," Olsen said.
"In fact, for every job that is mandated two are not. For people who choose not to be vaccinated - that's their choice - there are other opportunities out there for them, the labour market is tight," he said.
"We need to have a more reasoned discussion about this".
