Twenty four years languishing on a job seeker benefit?

G from G News
Feb 21, 2024
5 min read

"I won't apologise for making tough choices to support young people off welfare and into work, because 24 years languishing on welfare means no hope. It means no opportunity. It means no dignity from work." - said Christopher Luxon in his State of the Nation speech on Sunday 19 February 2024.

Then at a post cabinet conference the next day Christopher Luxon said something similar...

"Let me give you two key numbers that you need to understand, right? How on earth can you be on a jobseeker benefit and your average time on a jobseeker benefit has gone from 10½ years to 13 years under the last Government? On the same hand, you’ve actually got young people receiving benefit payments who are now languishing on benefits for 24 years on average. That is up over 50 percent in three years, right?"

Sadly instead of challenging or dissecting these numbers the press gallery present only said that they appreciated that.

However the actual data shows how Luxon is twisting an average that stemmed from those on job seeker who suffered a disability.

Those on jobseeker with a disability total about 80,000 and the average time spent on a job seeker benefit with a disability has always been much higher than those on the normal job seeker benefit.

In September 2017 the average time spent on the normal job seeker benefit for 18-64 year olds - was 893 days or 2.4 years while the median ( or middle number of the range of times ) was 316 days ( about ten months ). This implies 50% were on the normal job seeker under 10 months and that some smaller fraction pushed up the average to 2.4 years.

However the time spent on a disability job seeker benefit is much longer with an average of 3,338 days ( 9.1 years ) in September 2017 and a median of 2,603 days ( 7.1 years ).

By December 2022 the normal job seeker continuous duration numbers had barely changed at all, with the average time rising only 15 days from 893 days to 909 days. Likewise the median had risen from 316 ( 10 months ) to 389 days ( 1 year and 24 days ). Not much of an increase despite sanctions dropping by 58%.

However the average continuous time spent on a sickness or disability job seeker benefit did increase between September 2017 and December 2022, from 3,338 days ( 9.1 Years ) to 4,281 days ( 11.7 years ). Notably the median rose from 7.1 years to 11.7 years.

There's a bit more - but here is the point - for the normal job seekers of working age the time spent "languishing" on job seeker has remained flat.

It's the people on the disability job seeker benefit who have increased in "time spent" every quarter over the past five or six years.

Notably the quarterly numbers do fluctuate and the continuous time spent on the disability jobseeker - have gotten up to an average of 7,537 continuous days ( 20 years ) in September 2022 before dropping next quarter down to only 4,281 days ( 11.7 years ).

It's the sick and disabled who are deemed ready to work who are spending more time on job seeker.

So it's the sick and disabled who Luxon is targeting by adding the two groups together roughly - and the 24 years languishing thing ( 2023 numbers ) - with Luxon talking about young people having no opportunity and no dignity - that appears to skip over the fact that these folks have disabilities - and even cancer.

Here's what was said in the post cabinet presser shortly after these remarks :

"Media: Can I just get a bit more clarity around the health and disability thing. So inside the jobseeker support benefit numbers, 109,698 of them were work-ready; 80,000 of them are

there because of health conditions or disability. Will those people...

Luxon: Still able to work. Still deemed to be able to work. So they may be disabled, they may have a health issue, they have a mental health issue, or a challenge, but they are still deemed able and capable of working.

Media: So if someone has cancer and is on the jobseeker benefit, will you cut their benefit if they don’t turn up to an appointment?

Hon Louise Upston: As I said before, if someone is on jobseeker health condition and disability, they have different obligations, and the Work and Income front-line staff do a fantastic job about recognising what support people need, when, and how—"

Followed by :

"Luxon : Part-time work, or—

Hon Louise Upston: Part-time work, exactly.

Luxon: Ten hours a week."

Okay so this is about Luxon targeting the sick and disabled for sanctions - even those with cancer ( still able to work ) and then removing the details about this in his rhetoric - to suggest and mislead the average Sandra Dale or John Dory that it's a case of "bloody dole bludgers".

We've seen this dodgy slime ball rhetoric used by Luxon before when he sold the lie that the average family would be $250 per week better off with his tax cuts and childcare policies but concealed he was only talking about 3000 eligible families, and we've seen it when he claims government spending is the major driver of non-trade-able inflation when it's not.

The way Luxon sells his policies is fundamentally misleading and on Sunday we saw another example of this when Luxon claimed there was a $200 Billion hole in transport funding and thankfully Simon Wilson wrote about this at the NZ Herald :

"I asked him about his own Government’s transport plans, including a new four-lane highway to bypass the slip-prone Brynderwyn Hills road north of Auckland. In December, Transport Minister Simeon Brown called it a “top priority” and said it would be “fast-tracked”.

“Is it funded?” I asked the PM.

“Well, that’s something we’re working through right now,” he said.

So, announced but unfunded.

I followed up. “The minister has also announced the Rons [Roads of National Significance] programme is back on track.”

“Absolutely,” Luxon said.

“And the four-lane highway from Whangārei to Auckland. Are any of those projects funded?”

“Again,” he said, “we’re working our way through that.”

“You also support a new Auckland harbour crossing?”

“We do.”

“With no funding? What is the difference between your position and Labour’s?”

“What’s unacceptable,” said the PM, “is when you’re in Government and you stand up and tell the New Zealand people, ‘We’re doing this project,’ and you haven’t got a source of funding for it.”

Which, with the Brynderwyns, Rons, four lanes to Whangārei and a harbour crossing, was literally what he had just done."

Then yesterday Chippy exposed how Luxon was claiming to save $669.5 Million by re-indexing the benefits of New Zealand's poorest people to fund Luxon's tax cuts - and Luxon claimed that despite these poor people losing $2,300 per year by 2028 - that they were not losing anything - but retaining their purchasing power.

Naturally there was not much grilling of Luxon over these matters in our media and focus was really all on TVNZ's latest poll that suggested everyone was asleep cos nothing had changed.

The big focus was on the rise of Chlöe and a dip in a single poll for Chris Hipkins - ( the smartest guy in the room ) - while Luxon the big fibbing, misleading tourist stayed the same.

All I have to add is Maiki Sherman and Tova are tight gurl friends and there's a job at stake, and did you notice how Tova came out punching at Labour and Hipkins just before Maiki's poll?

Meanwhile these more serious lies, fibs and distortions from Luxon seem normalised and even praised.