Teens more than quarter of total unemployed

Junior Sheck, 19, is struggling to find work after completing his panelbeating course. Teenage unemployment is rising as the adult rate falls. Photo / Greg Bowker

Teenage unemployment has hit a level not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, despite a slight drop in the country's overall unemployment rate outside Christchurch.

Statistics New Zealand reported yesterday that the national unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent in the three months to June, despite a fall in employment in Christchurch after the February 22 earthquake.

But the unemployment rate for the youngest age group aged 15 to 19 rose by 0.1 percentage points to 27.6 per cent - the highest teenage rate since the official survey began in 1986, and the highest since the 1930s if teenage unemployment followed the same pattern as adult joblessness in earlier years.

Teenagers' share of the country's total unemployed, which was by far the highest of all developed countries in a survey last month by the New Zealand Institute, rose from 24.3 per cent in June last year to 26.2 per cent this June.

Almost half of all the unemployed in the country (43.8 per cent) are aged under 25.

NZ Institute director Dr Rick Boven said the main reason so many young people were unemployed in New Zealand was that on average they left school sooner than in any other developed country.

"We are not keeping the students engaged in school, so they are leaving early, and we are not providing adequate pathways into work," he said.

But Junior Sheck, 19, who left Otara's Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate at the end of 2009, is still on the dole despite completing Year 13.

He finished a one-year panelbeating course in June, cannot get work as a panelbeater and is willing to do anything.

"I want to do physical work, work that's not sitting around."

He said "quite a few" of the people in the panelbeating course had found work, but he has been handicapped by not having a car.

Mayors Taskforce for Jobs leader Dale Williams, who finished a two-day mayors' forum on youth transitions in Palmerston North yesterday, said the mayors resolved to challenge all political parties to develop a strategy to help young people make the transition from school to work.

"We need to look at reforming or reviewing the education system so that it actually puts young people at the centre of learning and involves them as they exit school," he said.

However Social Development Minister Paula Bennett recently rejected the mayors' call to make contact with every young person after they leave school, and defended the current targeted youth transition services which operate in high-risk areas and contact only young people judged to be at risk.

She noted yesterday that despite the record youth unemployment rate, the number under age 25 who are not in either employment, education or training ("NEET") fell slightly in the past year, from 10.7 per cent in June last year to 9.8 per cent this June.

The 15 to 19 NEET rate dropped from 9.5 per cent to 8.4 per cent, indicating the numbers in education or training increased even faster than the number unemployed and seeking work.

The NEET rate for the 20 to 24 age group fell from 11.9 per cent to 11.1 per cent. NEET rates for both groups peaked last year but are still higher than before the recession.

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