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Southlanders looking for work increases by more than 1200 since start of Covid-19 outbreak

Friday, 28 August 2020

Nijin Peter, left, and his wife Annie Oswald, right, talk to Katrina Thomas of Southland Rural Support Trust at the Great South job search last month. Great South has 664 job listings on its job portal.
Nijin Peter, left, and his wife Annie Oswald, right, talk to Katrina Thomas of Southland Rural Support Trust at the Great South job search last month. Great South has 664 job listings on its job portal.

There are more than 2700 people in Southland looking for work and that number has jumped 1200 since the Covid-19 outbreak started in New Zealand.

Business leaders fear more people will be searching for work as the impact of the pandemic keeps disrupting the economy.

Data from Work and Income classified by territorial authority, in this case, the Southland Regional Council, showed 2702 people were on the Job Seekers Work Ready benefit in July 2020.

In July last year, the figure was 2119, and in February it was 1509.

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The largest spike occurred during March and April. The country first went into lockdown on March 25 at 11.59pm.

In March there were 1648 on the work-ready benefit but by April that had increased to 2164.

The benefit is split into two categories: work ready - which are those actively seeking work, and health and disability - that covers people who have a health condition or disability, who can’t work or have a limited capacity to work.

In July 2020, there were 3542 people getting the job seeker benefit, up from 2907 in July 2019.

The data also reveals Covid-19 income relief payments offered by WINZ in the south.

In June, 115 people in Invercargill City, 12 in Gore District and 90 in the Southland District received the relief payment.

This increased in July, to 210 in Invercargill, 18 in Gore District and 174 in the Southland District.

The relief payment was introduced for people who had lost their jobs because of the pandemic. It offers $490 per week for a full-time worker and $250 for part-time workers for a 12-week period.

Otago Southland Employers Association chief executive Virginia Nicholls​ said she expected that the number of people on job seeker support would continue to increase in the following months.

July was actually a good month for the region but returning to alert level 2 had impacted the hospitality and tourism industry, she said.

Southland Chamber of Commerce president Neil McAra​ said he expected unemployment figures would rise further when the 8-week wage subsidy ran out.

Businesses have until September 1 to apply for the subsidy and until September 3 to apply for the Resurgence Wage Subsidy.

The New Zealand Treasury is forecasting national unemployment figures within eight to nine per cent after the wage subsidy runs out and Southland would be affected, McAra said.

Given the uncertainty of the economic climate, Southland employers were concerned about the challenges running their businesses and that there were not many able to offer employment, he said.

Fiordland could be put into an economic micro-climate of its own, as it had been severely impacted by the loss in tourism and hospitality, he said.

However, the rest of the Southland had been able to get through the pandemic better than other regions as the export market had still been operating throughout the year, he said.

In July, Great South Job held its Job search expo with more than 600 jobs listed in the region.

Great South strategic project general manager Steve Canny​ said matching employees with jobs was not an easy process.

In the 12 months prior to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, 9600 jobs were advertised throughout the region and in normal circumstance were hard to fill, Canny said.

The fact of the matter was the wage subsidy and mortgage holidays were going to end and the region would be impacted by that, he said.

However, Canny believed it was not all doom and gloom as there were lots of employment opportunities in the pipeline, such as the Homer Tunnel extension project and upgrade to the Great Walks tracks, and the region would be expecting more employment coming from the Jobs for Nature Fund.

It was also important to note that employment figures were affected by seasons, particularly June being the off-season for meat work processing, Canny said.

Key Statistics

Benefits and Wage subsidies definition