Unemployment up by nearly 2000

Press, 14 January 1982, Page 2

Unemployment up by nearly 2000

PA Wellington Unemployment rose further during December, the record November total increasing by nearly 2000, according to Labour Department figures. But the figures show the increase is accounted for by a big rise in the number of students on holiday special work.

The number of registered unemployed declined from the November figure of 56,314 to 50,237. But the number of people drawing the unemployment benefit, on special work, or involved in sponsored job-creation programmes totalled 85,052 in mid-December, compared with the November total of 83,072.

The number of schoolleavers on the unemployment benefit increased in the two weeks to which the figures applied from 2886 to 3809. The number of people in private-sector job-creation programmes increased, from 11,700 in November to 11,960 and the number of people involved in public-sector jobcreation programmes rose from 15,058 to 22,855. The increase was almost entirely accounted for by an increase in the number of students in the Community Service Programme from 85 to 8244.

The figures were made public by the Labour Party’s spokesman on employment, Mr T. K. Burke, who accused the Minister of Labour (Mr Bolger) of trying to hide the true level of unemployment. A spokesman for Mr Bolger said that the figures had not been made public because they applied only to a limited period: the two weeks between November 27 and December 11. Since the middle of December the number of students in the special work programme is believed to

have increased still further to more than 12,000. Mr Burke said that the Government could not try to. “justify” the December figures by asserting that the number of students in the Community Service Programme. was a temporary phenomenon. “The total unemployment figure must be compared with this time , last year (1980) and that clearly shows that job opportunities are down,” he said.'

The figures record 3900 unfilled vacancies as having been notified to the department, a decrease from the November, 1981, total of 4132 and from the October, 1981, figure of 4346. A jobvacancies figure for December, 1980, was not given. A year ago, the number of registered unemployed totalled just under 50,000, with the number of schoolleavers on the unemployment benefit increased by nearly 2000 on December’s figures. But there was about half the present number of private-sector job-creation programmes sponsored by the Government. The December. 1980, total of people employed on public-work schemes was about the same as the November, 1981, total, before the big infusion into the student programme. Mr Bolger denied that he had withheld the December, 1981, figures. He said that the figures had been available since the week before Christmas and had been compiled early “because the department was more concerned with placing job seekers in employment, given the imminent onset of the holiday period. To suggest that there was any sort of cover-up is simply untrue.”

The January figures would be released at the usual time, early next month.