Mike Hosking: The Government is failing our young unemployed

The British Government has a new policy around unemployment and it’s the old carrot and stick.

There isn't anything new around employment thinking. It’s a combination of rules and incentives, the state of the market place in terms of jobs and the mix of attitude of those looking for work and the amount of assistance the state Government is prepared to offer.

In Britain they are cracking down, so you need to meet your welfare officer or get penalised or apply for jobs or get penalised. If you don’t play ball you will lose your benefit.

Here, it’s the opposite - if you don’t want to work no one seems to care.

Brian Gaynor: Greying of workforce good for economy

The New Zealand workforce has changed dramatically over the past 24 years.

In mid-1990 our workforce was young and energetic with 338,500, or 22 per cent, of all employed workers in the 15 to 24 age bracket. By mid-2014 the total number of 15 to 24 year old workers had declined to 325,700 or just 14 per cent of the workforce.

Steve Baron: Unemployed Youth: The Bane of Society

We are seeing riots around the world, many of which appear to be fueled by delinquent youth looking for an opportunity to express their anger with society. Many of which have a burning desire to take what is not theirs and what they have not earned. Unemployment rates amongst these youth have risen dramatically through the continuing economic down-turn. Unemployed teenagers walk down the streets of every town in New Zealand, spray cans hidden under their hoodies, usually looking for trouble rather than work.

I sat outside my local cafe listening to their derogatory comments as our local Senior Sargent drove past a group of them, in his unmarked car. They knew who he was and he knew who they were, as he glanced sideways with a glaring eye. These youth have an unemployment rate three to four times that of the entire work force. With an economic down-turn fewer jobs are available, making them more vulnerable to unemployment. This is partly because of their lack of skills and work experience. Maori and Pacific Island youth face even higher unemployment rates than Pakeha. Why would an employer employ a youth when he could have someone much older and far more experienced for the same minimum wage? It's just common sense really.

Eric Crampton: Excess unemployment

Here's the data and program I've been using to generate measures of excess youth unemployment in New Zealand since the abolition of the differential youth minimum wage. [note - the files may still be coming up 404. Our new-and-consequently-worse-than-the-old server doesn't recognize odd file types like .dta and .do, but they're working on it.]

I've modified things a bit since the last time I wrote about it. As we have more and more quarters under the new regime, including those quarters' data in the estimation of parameters starts messing with the estimates if the point is figuring out what youth unemployment would look like if it had followed its prior trend relative to the adult rate.