About 100,000 people who are able to work are receiving the job-seeker benefit, despite major staff shortages around the country.
Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The numbers for the year at the end of June showed a 9.7 percent decrease in work-ready people on jobseeker support compared to the previous year.
That was 100,086 people, about 60 percent higher than the 63,030 when Labour took office in 2017 but down from the peak 2020 year when the number was 123,966 people.
Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni said the number equated to about 3.2 percent of the working age population, which was in line with the reported unemployment rate.
She said 344,622 people were recorded as receiving a main benefit at the end of June, a decrease of 47,000 from the January 2021 peak and much lower than the 487,500 predicted by Treasury at the beginning of the pandemic.
"The statistics show our investment into front line case management is working, and while we are not out of the woods by any means, we are tracking in the right direction."
National's Social Development Spokesperson Louise Upston said the Labour government needed to be doing more to help those stuck on the benefit in the long term, with a 55 percent increase in the number on jobseeker for more than a year compared to 2017.
"For some reason, this Labour government seems content to just passively allow thousands of New Zealanders to languish on the benefit without any direction, support, or consequences," she said.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
She said the system needed to have accountability so the people who could work, did so.
"New Zealanders expect obligations to find work are enforced, and consequences are imposed when these obligations are not met ... National believes that every Kiwi deserves the independence, choices and opportunities a job provides."
Sepuloni, however, said it was encouraging to see 26,334 people moved off a benefit into work during the June quarter and 8444 of those had previously been on a main benefit for more than a year.
The proportion of working-age people on a jobseeker benefit decreased from 6.1 percent a year ago to 5.4 percent.
The largest decrease was in East Coast, where 6.1 percent of working-age people were on a jobseeker benefit, down 1.1 percentage points. Northland had the highest proportion of jobseeker beneficiaries with 9.8 percent.
The number of people on the sole parent benefit for the year at the end of June increased 10.2 percent compared to the previous year, with the proportion of working-age population receiving sole parent payments up from 2.1 percent to 2.3 percent.
The percentage of people on a sole parent benefit increased in every region, with Northland the highest at 4.2 percent of the population also accounting for the biggest increase - 0.5 percentage points.