Alexander Gillespie: NZ report card 2024 - how the country fared in 25 key global and domestic rankings

If it’s good enough for school and university students, it’s good enough for entire countries, too.

This report card provides a snapshot of how New Zealand fared across a wide range of international measures – where it did well, and where there’s room for improvement.

Clive Bibby: Public servants and the chop.

I spent 12 years of my career as a pubic servant in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Farm Advisory Division during the 1970s.

During that time I was able to take advantage of some very real benefits available because of my association (membership of) with the PSA Union. 

Although my personal political beliefs at the time, when the powerful Boilermakers Union led by a Pommie Communist was holding the Country to ransom suggested I was being somewhat hypocritical as the main breadwinner in a family wanting to build its first home - I swallowed some dead rats and signed up to some very attractive low interest loans. The rest they say is history. 

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 8/2/24

Law and order changes are recorded on the govt’s website – the PM’s treaty stance is there, too, but we must hunt for it

The public is being seriously short-changed by ministerial press secretaries and the managers of the government’s official website.

The website carries no record of some big decisions being announced by the Luxon ministerial team.

Mike Hosking: The wage gravy train can't last forever

One of life's lessons is that the more things swing one way, the greater the eventual correction.

McLeod Transport in the Bay of Plenty are looking at becoming landlords because they can't get workers.

The broadest of questions once again has to be asked of the Government.

Just how badly do they want to cripple business and constrain the economy with their mad immigration policy? How many examples of extreme madness do they need before they work out they’ve got it horribly wrong?

Point of Order: RBNZ governor must curb inflationary pressures while keeping an eye on employment trends

Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr has a lot on his plate at present. He is battling to hose down prices which have been rising faster than they have done for 30 years, while at the same time “maximising” sustainable employment.

It’s a task none of his predecessors had to undertake. Finance Minister Grant Robertson widened his remit to include full employment, but probably didn’t expect the job being put to the test so soon.

Oliver Hartwich: DISASTER - The truth behind New Zealand's full employment

What does an unemployment rate of 3.2 per cent have in common with apples rotting on the trees in orchards?

Both are signs of an overheated labour market.

There is one market that seems to do well despite the New Zealand economy likely to slip into recession, house prices collapsing, and cost-of-living pressures mounting. That is the labour market.

There is a job – or two – for everyone in New Zealand. By normal standards, New Zealand has full employment, and then some. It is a jobseekers’ paradise with employers queuing up for candidates.

This seemingly positive story, however, has several irritating origins and many unpleasant consequences. Unpacking these issues reveals that tight labour markets are a cause for concern, not celebration

Andrew Bolt chats to Oliver Hartwich about inflation. employment and co-governance.

Sky News host Andrew Bolt says there are signs the Jacinda Ardern “gloss” is wearing off fast in New Zealand.

Mr Bolt discussed the issue with New Zealand Initiative Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich.

Jon Miltimore: The Costs of NYC’s $15 Minimum Wage Are Already Visible

New York City’s minimum wage jumped more than 15 percent overnight on January 1, and employers are already cutting workers’ hours as a result.

CBS has the story.

Brian Gaynor: Winners and losers in the generation game

The New Zealand workforce is changing rapidly.

Over the past 20 years there has been a massive 488 per cent increase in the number of those aged 65 years and over in employment, from 23,800 to 139,090, while there has been a mere 7 per cent increase in the number of employed 15 to 24-year-olds, from 324,200 to 347,700.

These trends, which are expected to continue, are having a big impact on the financial positions of our older and younger generations.

Matt Ridley from the UK: Technology creates jobs as much as it destroys them

Bill Gates voiced a thought in a speech last week that is increasingly troubling America’s technical elite — that technology is about to make many, many people redundant. Advances in software, he said, will reduce demand for jobs, substituting robots for drivers, waiters or nurses.

The last time that I was in Silicon Valley I found the tech-heads fretting about this in direct proportion to their optimism about technology. That is to say, the more excited they are that the “singularity” is near — the moment when computers become so clever at making themselves even cleverer that the process accelerates to infinity — the more worried they are that there will be mass unemployment as a result.

Richard Epstein: Is Employment a “Human Right”?

Efforts to stamp out so-called discrimination in the labor market will kill jobs and stifle economic growth.

Today’s economic trends are not promising. In the United States, the European community and Japan, the prospect of dismal growth is too often met with desperate measures that only make matters worse. There are endless claims about the failure of austerity to spur growth, and impassioned attacks on the folly of unbridled spending that will drown the nation in debt. What a choice!