The Labour party like to scream “where’s the jobs?”, but employers are screaming “where are the workers?”
This highlights the problem of an increasing minimum wage rate. It prices morons off the market permanently. Basically people are unprepared for work, for even the most basic of jobs.
The country’s unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 1999, but some employers are struggling to find people willing to take on manual work.
Several employers desperately seeking reliable workers say it is as if people are unprepared for the workforce and don’t want to prove themselves.
The unemployment rate for the March quarter was 7.1 per cent, the highest it has been since June 1999, and the youth rate was 23.4 per cent.
Hayden Bootton, of HSB Builders in Northland, said finding unskilled workers was difficult, despite offering apprenticeships.
He was offering $16 an hour for temporary workers and the minimum wage for permanent work, pay rises every six months and the prospect of a full builder’s wage of about $20 an hour at the end of training.
Bootton said young people were unprepared for the realities of the workforce.
His father, a farmer, offered labouring work but received no responses.
Northland’s unemployment rate is almost 9 per cent, one of the country’s highest.
