labour market / jobs

Why Wages Won’t Rise
Full employment is consistent with little wage pressure after all....
3 February 2005 - Gareth Morgan

Immigration: Peters' Paranoia or a flood to flee?
A flood of migrants or just the wrong colour? The data behind the Peters' faction paranoia....
11 September 2002 - Gareth Morgan

Teachers Pay: Flick a Coin
Who knows what a teacher is worth? There's no market to determine what value they create anyway so the outcome of the current dispute will be an arbitrary impost on the taxpayer that may exceed or fall short of rewarding teachers their value to society. For sure it will not result in each teacher being paid what they're worth...
12 June 2002 - Gareth Morgan

Less pay, more jobs
The government is claiming its policies have brought the unemployment rate down to 5.6% and lifted THE annual growth rate in employment to 2.3%. It needs to be careful in claiming the credit. A closer look suggests the drivers of improving employment rates in New Zealand are similar to those driving those rates up worldwide - slower wage rises....
14 February 2001 - Gareth Morgan

Employment bill shafts workers
One exciting prospect from returning monopoly power to traditional trade unions is that last time they used it to their advantage (in the early 1980's), the RB wasn't independent. That augurs for all hell to break loose as they muscle business to pay more for labour. Don Brash should have tweaked the consciousness of all involved to the...
9 August 2000 - Gareth Morgan

The low paid were overpaid
Generally speaking over the life of the Employment Contracts Act those industries employing the highest cost labour have also provided the largest wage rises. One interpretation of this would be this is that the true premium for skills been revealed as the monopoly hold of Trade Unionism has been pared back. Certainly their monopoly grip has...
1 August 2000 - Gareth Morgan

Who's best at looking after the low skilled?
Over the last 5 years in the US, the unemployment rate of those without a high-school education has declined at twice the pace as the overall unemployment rate - down 4 percentage points compared to the overall fall of 1.3%. Such are wonders of an economy that is firing on all cylinders - it actually serves all citizens. Further wage disparities...
1 August 1999 - Gareth Morgan

Scrap the dole, bring in the poor person's benefit
The rising numbers of individuals and businesses wanting to sup at the public trough, is a trend government needs to cap mercilessly. The morbid tendency to make the taxpayer their first stop when economic conditions slip is a direct result of decades of unadulterated welfarism. With the dead-weight load of the bludger sectors at best capped...
14 July 1998 - Gareth Morgan

Why workfare won't reduce unemployment
The Government has decided that people should work for the dole. While work-for-the-dole schemes have some laudable aims, they are not the solution to the problem of long-term unemployment. There are several justifications for work-for-the-dole or "workfare" schemes: the long-term unemployed need to be given work so that they do not...
31 March 1998 - Tony Booth

Waste not, want not
NZ has one of the highest percentage of skilled immigrants of any country in the world. Yet, between 1991 and 1995, the high calibre of migrants seeking permanent residence in NZ appeared to leave us with more suitable applicants than we had jobs for and a narrower occupational mix among new migrants than was desirable. Many highly skilled professional migrants, specifically targeted by ...
9 December 1997 - Bridget Smith

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
Employment is plummeting, wages are falling and unemployment is rising! We’re heading for oblivion faster than a Russian astronaut on Mir! Well, you could be forgiven for believing that given some of the commentaries in recent weeks. Real life ain’t so bad though. According to the Household Labour Force Survey, employment fell 0.1% between June and September and it is now lower than it was ...
3 December 1997 - Tony Booth

A BoP Junkie
The latest balance of payments data show that the current account deficit has dived precipitously and laid waste many a prediction. The deficit has not simply blown-out, it has exploded to nearly double the size it was just 12 months ago. It’s now the ugliest deficit in the OECD at over 6% of GDP. But the figures include the first of two ANZAC frigates worth over $500m each, and past ...
8 October 1997 - Andrew Gawith

Love Thy Neighbour
Gee whiz, didn’t everybody kick up a stink last month when the July migration figures came out. In the year to July 1997 net migration plummeted by 45% compared to year earlier levels, a fall entirely driven by a drop in Asian immigrant numbers. Total immigrant numbers fell 12%. While immigrant numbers from our traditional sources, Europe, the UK, and South Africa for example, remained ...
10 September 1997 - Bridget Smith