http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/93170524/90000-young-kiwis-have-no-job-no-training-to-go-to
90,000 youth are unemployed and in no training in one article, 4,000 of those from Canterbury. In the next article the mayor of Canterbury is campaigning the government to let more immigrants into the country to do unskilled work as there is a shortage. Farmers are complaining that they train new immigrants up and then they leave the country because their visas expire and then they find it hard to find someone and have to go through the whole training procedure again. What we really need to do is match up those complaining there is no work with those who are looking for workers. Shouldn’t be hard to do as surely that is what WINZ are there for? We know who is getting the job seekers benefit so why is this so hard?
Kyle Goldman is one of the unemployed and he says he is trying because he applied for 20 jobs last month. Sorry but that is not trying. There are 30 days in a month, he didn’t even manage to apply for a job per day. It is so simple to apply for jobs. Go to Seek or another job website and you upload your CV so every job you apply for takes 5 mins to apply for a job, you might have to modify your covering letter to more tailor to the job you are applying for but it is very easy. So this guy is claiming he is trying because he spent 5 mins per day Mon-Fri sending off an email. It doesn’t say he followed up on any emails he sent but it does say he got 8 interviews, which is a pretty great strike rate for sending off only 20CVs. 40% of people he sent his CV to gave him their time for an interview. Why didn’t he get those jobs? Well we don’t know because the article didn’t say but if he really wanted a job he would have asked why and got some feedback to do better next time. Maybe it was lack of experience, maybe he should consider doing some volunteer work. Even if the volunteer work doesn’t lead to a job where you volunteer, it’s great for your CV, gives you a reference and stops the social isolation that this article talks about.
People complain about minimum wage jobs but the thing is that’s where most of us started. Yes, my first job was minimum wage, it led to much greater things. So no, I don’t feel sorry for young people starting on minimum wage, it’s right of passage and it’s the best time to earn minimum wage before you have kids to support and often you still have family support or can fit in with flat mates rather than rent your own house. Also some of these minimum wage jobs come with accommodation. Minimum wage on a farm where they give you a house onsite is actually great because you are not paying rent, a saving of several hundred a week, save money on petrol – you work from home and often you get some food from the farm or garden. Some people are spending 50% of their wages on housing http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/312895/nz%27s-poorest-spend-half-their-pay-on-housing so there are a lot of other benefits in farming so I don’t understand why we have a shortage of farmers.
It also annoys me the argument that the minimum wage is too low and that only migrants will work for it. NZs minimum wage is quite high compared to other countries but the problem is our benefit system is so generous that people don’t want to work for free and they see themselves working for free when the benefit they are getting now gives them as much as they would working.
My solution? WINZ comes up with jobs and if they turn down three of them they lose their benefit. We can’t keep paying money to people to sit on their butts and do nothing and then import people to do unskilled jobs because our people are too lazy to do them. People like Kyle can move for work. I’ve moved for work, yes I missed family but it was a great experience and it helped my career. People just put too many excuses in front of working. It would be best for his self esteem to have a job he just needs to be pushed into it. We complain too much in NZ rather than looking for solutions. When I moved back to NZ from overseas I immediately applied for several jobs, got 3 interviews for the next day and then got all three jobs I got to pick my favorite of the offers. People need to approach job hunting like a job. You spend the whole day doing it. You are either sending off job interviews, following up the job interviews you have sent out, visiting companies you want to work for to ask if there is any work and leaving your CV or filling in an application form and going for job interviews and you don’t stop until you get a job. Always ask for feedback from a failed job interview. Yes, you feel sad that you missed out but what was it that had you miss out and can you change things so next time you get it right? We have lots of jobs in this country right now. There is no reason we should be importing unskilled labour to New Zealand. We need to import the skilled labour we are short of and train up our own for jobs that provide training. We also need communication to High School students which industries are looking for workers so they can study in areas where there is need.
Revisionist Media 