Friday 9 November 2007

Dyson Gets Good Advice

"The figures I used in the House were correct," said Ruth Dyson, Minister for Social Development and Employment.

"I was responding to a question relating to the Household Labour Force Survey and the Official Unemployment Rate. Therefore it was appropriate for the Ministry of Social Development to provide me with Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) information to define the working age population, which is classified as New Zealanders aged 15 years and over."

HLFS Working age population - September quarter 3,262,000 (15 years plus) Invalids beneficiaries as at October: 78,766, or 2.4% Sickness beneficiaries as at October:47,717 or 1.5% total: 3.9%

"The figures quoted by Judith Collins and repeated by Lindsay Mitchell appear to come from the Ministry's September benefit fact-sheets, which uses Statistics New Zealand, final population resident population estimates for people aged 18–64 years, as of 31 March 2007. This provides an estimate of the population of New Zealand, aged 18 to 64 of 2.6 million people - hence the difference."

Benefit fact-sheets are a Ministry of Social Development publication, and do not relate to the HLFS survey.

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ENDS

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