Thinking about emigrating to New Zealand because it’s a great place to raise kids?
Think again because according to Labour’s youth affairs spokeswoman, Jacinda Ardern, more than 70,000 people in the 15 to 24 age group are not at work, or in education or training and youth unemployment is a ticking timebomb.
As far as we know, there are no figures for the number of people in that age group that have left New Zealand to find work, or study abroad.
Read the report here.
For the young people who decide to stay in NZ and study, the average university student’s debt is $16,000 and loans must start to be repaid as soon the borrower reaches a salary of least $19,084. Those who leave the country to avoid making repayments are charged charged interest at 6.8 % PA after six months away. It’s one reason why many graduates don’t return home.
Also, read our Economics and Demographics page – ““Out of a population of 4 million there are 360,000 working-aged New Zealanders on welfare benefits or accident compensation. That’s 12.4 per cent, or one eighth, of all those aged 15 to 64 – up from just 2 per cent a half-century ago. More than a fifth of children (21 per cent) are growing up in benefit-dependent families. More than a quarter of working-aged Maori (26 per cent) are on benefits or ACC.
E2NZ.org 
It is a ticking time bomb all right.
I would like to point out that this situation is visibly worsening, and heading towards a tipping point.
I saw people crying sitting in the WINZ office the other day, all seats were filled, two of them said they had been sitting there for hours. I thought, hadn’t they made appointments? The more people don’t or can’t work, the less money the government has, to pay out to all the people who can no longer survive because of the high taxes and low wages and high cost of living and need government assistance. It is self-perpetuating. You can only hang on for so long, before you just fall off. The job listings in the papers are pathetic outside the big cities. Houses standing empty wanting tenants and buyers. The number of people “dropping out” from the burden is increasing, so the pressure on the government is increasing. Reports that the property market has brightened are whistling in the dark, which they do well here.
It is a vicious circle, and I do not see that Key’s administration has a handle on it. Instead, they are all looking forward to the RWC – to bring Cargo. ;P