I get sick of hearing the stories about someone leaving school in 1960, having dropped out and then walking into a job that lasted a lifetime. I get even more tired of these people shaking their heads at today’s young ones, who seemingly can’t get work and are sitting at home in large numbers.
One in four, or 23.8%, of 15- to 19-year-olds were unemployed in this country in December 2024 (March quarter figures are not yet available). For 15- to 24-year-olds, the unemployment rate is 9.1%, and the proportion not fully employed or in training or education is much higher.
The issue is complex: fewer jobs, more people going for them, the 2023 immigration spike and pensioners staying in work for longer. None of that helps these young people.
And our world today is far more complex, sophisticated and competitive compared to the early 60s -- a workforce which was yet to see mass immigration or Rogernomics, and for whom the Great Depression was a fading memory. There was near full employment, no internet, social media or cell phones. Men went to work, women stayed home, one income was enough and rock ‘n’ roll and milk bars were just emerging. It sounds awful right?
A 40-hour week paid just over $40 and the average home cost about $6500. Now, the average house costs just over $900,000 and the average wage is around $72,000.
The retirement age was 60, and young people weren’t competing with older people for jobs as they are today.
Apart from these hurdles, young brains are processing lightning-fast material 24/7. And everyone has a label: “mental health” diagnoses have replaced genuine resilience, the cops now drop you home instead of kicking you up the arse, and tens of thousands of young men and women don’t attend school, work or some form of training.
We have allowed them to sit at home doom scrolling, and despite the current government’s jobseeker support obligations, “traffic light” benefit sanctions and training course requirements, the state pays them to do so with few obligations.
Vocational counsellor Tina Akuhata returned to New Zealand three years ago after working in Australia for eight years and says she was shocked at what she found. In her time away, New Zealand went “soft” as a country and veered strongly left in its approach, she says.
Australia would never allow such lax oversight of benefits and insist on such few obligations, says Akuhata. New Zealand youth on welfare need to be offered more incentives and more stick, she says. There is no way students leaving school across the Tasman could simply just sign up for welfare by walking out the front gate, as 18-year-olds can do here.
We spend $4 billion on jobseeker and emergency benefits each year and the obligations on those receiving the money are hardly onerous.
With one in four 15-19 year olds out of work, the workplace participation for that cohort fell last year from 56% to 51%. As a return on investment it is seriously poor.
Thousands of young Kiwis are drifting -- and not in a good direction. How hard is it to round them up and have them work-ready? But we bring in hundreds of Pacific workers to pick fruit because our youth are unable, incapable, too busy looking for work, or simply not wanted.
Maybe social media is consuming them but government policy now means they are out of the picture in horticulture. Employers have told me they have tried to get Kiwis before but their attitude was appalling and, by day three, they failed to show.
While thousands of young people were sitting idle, we were – until last year’s fall-off -- bringing in record numbers of immigrants who would work anywhere, anytime and were keen to forge a new life. But by allowing so many willing immigrants, was the government displacing young Kiwis who could fill jobs in gas stations, rest homes, supermarkets, etc?
South Africa’s overall unemployment was the highest in the world in the year to March, at 32.8%. In comparison, our youth unemployment rate, at 23.8%, is not far behind what’s deemed the jobless basket case of the world.
What more could, or should, we be doing? Under this government, youth unemployment has got worse and I see little being done to address it. Surely, we can’t allow this to further balloon, and doing nothing will mean just that.
Young people are despondent about the New Zealand they are no longer part of. Here we are paying record levels of money to help them stay idle at home. It’s time we put that money towards incentives for industries to give them a go. Incentives work for everyone. For some, maybe we send them to the military to do the basic three-month course to keep them busy and off social media and the black hole it offers.
And we have to stop simply paying them welfare. Require something from them after a certain period as they do in Australia. Over there, the unemployment rate for 15 to 19-year-olds is 14%. That shows we are doing something very wrong. Maybe parents are too soft, and after that our governments are also a soft touch by requiring not much in return.
In Australia, school leavers aged under 22 without a qualification need to participate in approved activities for 25 hours a week to receive benefits such as the youth allowance. After 12 months on the dole, job seekers face “mutual obligation requirements” to continue receiving support. The adult benefit kicks in at age 22.
Here, job seekers are expected to look for work for at least 30 hours a week and must take part in work ability assessments, and there are the tougher sanctions and reporting requirements the coalition government has introduced.
But the work tests are a hoax that are easy to game and get around. If we carry on like this we will have an entire generation who have never worked. The downstream effects of that would be enormous and costly, both socially and economically.
At the very least, let’s send some idle teens to basic military training to just keep them in the game and off welfare. Direct at least some of the welfare money into job subsidies. Incentivise employers, team them up with young people and show employers they can have good attitudes and be successful.
If the lack of a driver licence is costing a young person work, prioritise their getting a licence.
Don’t allow kids to leave school without a plan. Make trades more attractive. Ban social media for under-16s.
These young people are not all losers or lost causes but they are looking at a country that no longer has their back. Jumping on welfare is a recipe for decades of interaction with Work and Income, and we must avoid that.
Both sides must do their bit, and both right now are falling short. Christopher Luxon can’t say we are on the economic comeback trail when one in four young people is at home doing nothing. This is one of his big tests. Does he even know it’s this bad and does he have a plan to get our young people back on their feet?
