How Many Unemployed Kiwis Would It Take to Fill Telstra Stadium?
New Zealand’s unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest on record at 3.4% and also the lowest among 27 OECD countries that report standardised unemployment rates. Labour force participation is also at record levels. The number of unemployed in New Zealand is now so low, they would leave more than 10,000 empty seats at Telstra Stadium for a Wallabies-All Blacks game.
By contrast, Australia’s unemployment rate in October was 5.2%. While still close to 27 year lows, the differential with NZ highlights Australia’s failure to tackle labour market reform. The Australian government’s proposed IR reforms are decidedly inferior to the NZ model. While they may still assist in lowering Australia’s unemployment rate, the differential with NZ shows the extent to which unemployment in Australia is a deliberate policy choice, wilfully ignoring a superior reform model across the Tasman.
posted on 10 November 2005 by skirchner
in Economics
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That’s what frustrates me about the Howard government. We get all the conservative social policies and none of the sweeping economic reforms that right-wing governments have introduced in other countries. Given that the Hawke-Keating government was going to get kicked out sometime on the mid-nineties I think we would have been better off electing Hewson in 1993.
In reality the Howard government is a tax-and-spend government with conservative social policies. The tax system is screaming out for reform but our treasurer seems to think that shifting the brackets up a notch is “reform”. He also seems to think he did it all in 1999-2000 with the GST and the Ralph reforms, even though its increasingly clear the Ralph reforms were a big mistake.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/10 at 03:53 PM
New Zealand has a low unemployment rate because it has lost so many people to Australia. The country is desperately short of labour so anyone willing and able to work is snatched up by employers.
[Please, spare me a lecture on the lump-of-labour fallacy.]
New Zealand’s productivity growth has been nothing to write home about, either.
Posted by Jack Strocchi on 11/13 at 02:22 PM