Despite the introduction of Future Focus, whereby beneficiaries have to adhere to strict conditions or loose their entitlements, people on the unemployment benefit grew by 2158 in the last month.
Today, Paula Bennett said:
“Normally you would see a huge spike in benefits over January, but all benefits rose by just 100 to 351,032 in the last month,” says Ms Bennett.
There's never been a huge spike in beneficiary numbers over January... this is pure spin.
This is the smallest December to January increase since 2008.
“In the last month more than 2,000 Maori went off welfare into work and more than 2,000 young people did the same,” says Ms Bennett.
Very suspect figures Bennett.
There were 62,122 people on Unemployment Benefits in January 2012.Paula Bennett claims that 4000 people went off the unemployment benefit into work in January. However figures attained under the Official information act show that only 2,155 people found employment in the first eight months of Future Focus, which was implemented in October 2010.
While that is up from 59,964 on the previous month, there were also more than 4,000 people who went off this benefit into work in January.
That's an average of 270 people per month who were previously receiving the unemployment benefit that managed to find work. Bennett saying 4000 people went of the unemployment benefit into work last month is quite frankly bullshit!
As of 30 June 2011, Future Focus resulted in 7,423 previous WINZ UB clients no longer receiving a benefit. Only 2,155 found employment while a whopping 3,698 apparently did not bother to reapply, and are not documented as having any other income.
236 of the 7,423 had their benefits stopped because they moved overseas. 596 people lost their benefits because they failed a WINZ work test, stopped training or did not provide personal details and documents the new regime requires. 373 had their benefits cancelled for undisclosed reasons.
One has to wonder what the people who've been kicked off welfare without any other income are doing to survive?
“Predictions that Unemployment Benefits would rise to about 100,000 post-recession have never eventuated, but clearly we still have a way to go.”
How long is National going to use the recession as an excuse for their economic and social bungling?
The problem is they're intentionally kicking people off welfare so the figures don't look bad. The actual unemployment rate including people not receiving any government assistance is information nigh on impossible to attain... and there's an obvious reason National is playing hide the statistics?
