The Household Labour Force survey has show that Maori unemployment has increased drastically from 9.6 percent to 14.2 percent in the past year, representing10,000 job losses. To contrast, unemployment for Pakeha (New Zealanders of European decent) has only gone from 3.1 to 4.5 percent. There are a number of reasons for this, one being that youth unemployment is way up (with one in four young people out of work) and Maori have a younger population on average. According to Council of Trade Unions economist Peter Conway; “there also may be still some discrimination in the labour market. I’m not saying it’s there but others say it’s there and hitting Maori hard,”
Maori are over represented in sectors of the economy which has been hit hardest by the recession, such as manufacturing. Before World War 2, a large proportion of the Maori population still lived a traditional lifestyle in rural areas of New Zealand, but in the economic boom that followed the war many moved to the city to take jobs in factories. Having this role as a sort of reserve army of labour meant that Maori disproportionately lost their jobs when the post war boom ended. A generation later the same thing is happening. The CTU is calling for special programmes to address the issue of Maori joblessness;
Targeting your community programmes and your youth opportunities to make sure that where there is a large concentration of Maori workers who are unemployed, and making sure things like the Skills Investment Fund which means there is a subsidy available to help with training to help people into a new job, that that is targeted as well to people in most need
This could be the first step in seriously addressing the imbalance between Maori and Pakeha employment.
