Recently, (July 2022) , Luxon issued his 'Welfare that Works policy'. The policy basically announced that if elected, he intends to defund the Ministry of Social Development to pay private providers who would be incentivised to get teenagers and young people under the age of 25 years into work. Any young person who wouldn't or couldn't go along with these workplans would face "sanctions."

Luxon made some bold claims to support his draconian plan. He falsely claims that Labour's policies have caused the number of under 25s on benefits to explode, when he says there are 'fifty thousand more people on a job seeker benefit than when National was in power'. He also made the spurious claim that 'if you go on a benefit before the age of twenty, you are likely to spend twelve years of your life on welfare'. So, is he really trying to suggest that our youth are spending more than twelve years on a benefit?

Luxon's figures seem way out of wack, given our current high unemployment figures, so I decided to find out the facts using mostly Statistics New Zealand as a source unless otherwise stated.

In the September 2021 quarter, the unemployment rate for people aged 15–24 was 9.6 percent, compared with a national rate of 3.2 percent and a rate of only 2.3 percent for people aged 25–64. The 2021 youth unemployment statistic is however, a strong improvement on National's track record for youth employment, which was sitting at 12.9 percent when they held office in 2016 but fluctuated between this low point to much higher rates up to 16.4 percent at times, during the entire period they held office.

Naturally, national crises such as the Global Financial Crash (GFC) in 2008 and the Covid19 pandemic, affect youth unemployment disproportionately as youth are often in insecure work. After the GFC the youth unemployment rate spiked in the December 2008 quarter, (from where Labour left it at 9.9%) to 10.5% and climbed to 16.4 percent in the March 2009 quarter, then stabilised at 14.4% by 2015.

Likewise, youth unemployment was strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, however Labour's performed much better. The September 2020 quarter did see a sharp climb in youth unemployment to 13.2%. However, over the year to the September 2021 quarter, the youth unemployment rate dropped significantly (3.6 percentage points) to 9.6 percent, bringing it back to near pre-COVID-19 levels.

The youth labour force is a vital player in the economy and also have had much higher unemployment rates than other age categories in the labour market. Since the early 2000s, the unemployment rate of the 15–24 age group has been approximately three to four times that of the 25–64 age group, and usually over two-and-a-half times that of the overall working-age population. These figures are higher than most other OECD countries. What are some of the reasons for these disparities?

One of the reasons for this is that in Aotearoa youth are often unemployed for short periods, as they make up a higher proportion of the seasonal and rural labour forces. Long-term unemployment is instead, significantly higher among those in older age groups, who require more stable work, which is sometimes harder to find. Other factors inhibiting employment uptake for youth are lack of transport, or lack of opportunity in regional towns.

What about Luxon's claim that youth unemployed were more than likely to remain on welfare for over twelve years? In the September 2021 quarter, 21.4 percent of unemployed youth aged 15–24 were unable to find work for six months or more. This figure fluctuates from between 6200 to 8400 people. There is no evidence that I could find of how many of this group, if any, remain on their benefit for over a decade. I call bs on that one.

Using data from Statista Research, published in April 2022, we can see that long term unemployment figures worsened under National. They inherited a low long term unemployment rate of 4.33% from Helen Clarkes Labour government in 2008. Once Key came to power, this figure increased annually until it reached 15.94% in 2017 when Ardern took power. Since then, the numbers of long term unemployed have declined annually, 13.58% in 2018, 12.85% in 2019 and down to 8.9% in 2020. In my view, these decreases in numbers of long term unemployed are a natural consequence of Labour's raises to the minimum wage and a buoyant construction sector, along with the economic stimulus provide through Robertson's infrastructure developments.

Also, more than half of unemployed teenagers are engaging in education. Their labour force participation rate tends to increase in the December and March quarters, during summer holidays, and dip in the June and September quarters as more young people engage in study. Out of 23,100 unemployed teenagers (aged 15–19), 12,200 or 53%, were in education or training. A further 6,400 young people, were unavailable for work due to childcare responsibilities.

There seems to be no sound reasoning or sound research behind Luxon's plan to punish youth for being unemployed. It seems to be simply put, just another plan to devolve the public sector in favour of private enterprise, to ostracise youth and to demonise and discredit the work our public sector are already doing.

Under Labour’s Mana Mahi programme, for example, which has a high representation of youth (64 percent of the 5,000 unemployed who took part in Mana Mahi were under 24 years of age), 75 percent of the youths who engaged with the programme, have not reapplied for a benefit as they had gained employment.

I foresee that National's plan, will have dire consequences for a generation of youth and our national development. Sanctioning and effectively criminalising youth who cannot work for a variety of reasons from, health, transport, childcare or rural location, is not a way forward. It will drive youth into the arms of gangs, and into a downward spiral of dissolution and poor mental health outcomes.

Luxon claims to 'care deeply' about youth. Does Mr Luxon care enough to support a teenage mother raising a young child? Or a young person suffering from depression or living with neural diversity? Is Luxon capable of empathising with our nation's youth who live in regional areas such as Northland with historic levels of low opportunity?

We need public sector support for our developing youth and developing labour force. We need to provide support to unplanned teenage motherhood if we want to raise healthy babies, and a mum who can return to work later. We need to acknowledge the worth of our youth in training, and support for our young developing workforce as they are finding their feet.

We are not a corporation as Mr Luxon seems to think. Our youth are not just labour units who should be punished for not fitting into the corporate profit cycle. We do not need sanctions against our youth, or to institutionalise punishments against our kids who are struggling, or who are different from the mainstream view of 'normal' and 'productive'.

Luxon's fundamentalist neoliberal 'Welfare that Works' policy is more like warfare on welfare and warfare on youth, than sound governance. His policy is not based on empirical evidence as the evidence shows Robertson's plan has brought high employment and fast economic recovery. Luxon doesn't seem to care much for the evidence. Instead, he seems hell-bent on defunding our MSD, on privatisation, and to erode the protective shelter our public services provide for all kiwis.

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