New job scheme takes effect

Press, 2 August 1985, Page 22

New job scheme takes effect

PA Wellington A new employment assistance programme, the job opportunity scheme, started on August 1. The scheme replaces the employment incentive scheme and provides a subsidy to public and private sector employers who employ an eligible registered unemployed person, said the Minister of Employment, Mr Burke. For the first time, a selfemployed option has been included. Mr Burke said the job opportunity scheme should prove helpful in getting unemployed people into regular employment with a reasonable chance of the job continuing at the end of the subsidy period. Under the scheme, the minimum job search period has been reduced from 13 weeks to 10 weeks. The scheme has two levels of assistance depending upon how long the prospective employee has been unemployed. Duration of unemployment no longer needs to be continuous. For people registered as unemployed for at least 10 consecutive weeks, or 16 weeks in the last six months, a subsidy of $75 a week is available to an employer for up to six months. Employers taking on those registered for at least 20 consecutive weeks, or 32 weeks in the past year, are entitled to a $l2O-a-week subsidy for three months,

reducing to $75 a week for the next three months. A new move is the availability of the subsidy to unemployed people wishing to become self-employed. Job seekers registered with the Labour Department who are in receipt of a full-income benefit from the Social Welfare Department and have a serious business proposal will be eligible, after the required job-search period, for the subsidy at either level. It will help meet living costs while the new business is being established. “This initiative recognises that employment can take many forms, and provides the opportunity for unemployed people with creative enterprise ideas to put them into practice and thereby help themselves into employment,” said Mr Burke.