Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Labour's desperate lies

I generally avoid the word 'lie'.

But the following is a lie.

"New Zealand has the highest youth unemployment rate in the developed world."

If you are wondering where you heard it most recently, NewstalkZB is regularly running a Labour advert which makes the claim.

The rate for 15-24 year-olds is currently 17.3%

This is lower than the US, the UK, France, Finland, Sweden, Chile, the Czech Republic, Italy, Belgium and a few others.

It isn't hard to check these spurious claims. For Labour to be so brazen they must be beyond caring.

Update: Even predicated on the "highest unemployment rate for under twenty year-olds" the claim does not hold up. There are many countries with unemployment rates for 15-19 year-olds higher than NZ's.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Labour's definition of "youth" were the 15-19 year bracket, which can not be compared with the broader segment (15-24) you refer to.
I would have though the 15-19 as "yoof," and the 20-24 group as "youth."

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Doesn't matter. Go check the OECD link and enter 15-19. Still lots of countries with higher rates.

Mark Hubbard said...

Youth unemployment rate in Spain, right now - an economy which dwarfs NZ - is 46%.

Keynesian socialism: has been an outright disaster.

Dazza said...

And there constant calls for increases to the minimum wage would likely see the rate increase further.

Anonymous said...

Youth unemployment rate in Spain, right now - an economy which dwarfs NZ - is 46%.

Spain's economy is restructuring now as we speak!

The problem with NZ's unemployment levels aren't that they are too high - rather that they are far too low for any meaningful reforms of the economy to take place.

James said...

A massive reduction in public sector jobs would be a great start..

zapped said...

Sadly Political commentary which is ill founded works both ways. The simple truth is the average increase in youth unemployment of OEDC countries over the past 3 years was 4.7%. New Zealand was well above this at 6%.
Compare this with the preceding 3 years and you will see NZs increase was 0.4%. So it does not take a mathematician to figure it out. Comments like "it doesn't matter" doesn't cut it. NZ Labour debt. puts the figure for 15-19 at 6.8 and 20-24 at 11.7% so it is unclear where you find your statistics. If you don't want to report accurately it is probably better to find another vocation. This dangerous journalistic practice on the web and cannot be condoned.