New Zealand is leading the OECD in another one of those quality-of-life type surveys, only this one isn’t something you’ll hear too much bragging about at the emigration fairs.
If you are emigrating to New Zealand and have older children (aged 15-24) in your family you owe it to them to find out more what you’re getting into before you leave. How sure are you that you’ll be able to find work and hold on to it?
Youth unemployment is escalating in New Zealand as more and more young people struggle to find work or apprenticeships. The true picture of job shortages is likely to be even worse because so many unemployed people are leaving New Zealand to find work in Australia. The ratio of unemployed youth to employed adults is more than four – this means they’re four times more likely to be unemployed than people aged 25-54.
From The Economist:
The ratio of youth to adult unemployment worsens (see graph above)
THE global recession has hit young workers particularly hard. In the mostly rich countries of the OECD, the youth-unemployment rate (the unemployed as a proportion of the labour force aged 15-24) increased by 4.9 percentage points between 2007 and 2009, to 18.4%. By the second quarter of 2010 it had risen to 19.6%. Young people typically struggle to gain employment and are the first to be laid off; in nine countries more than one in four are now jobless. Spain has the highest youth-unemployment rate, at 42%, more than twice the unemployment rate of adults aged 25-54. In New Zealand, Sweden and Luxembourg, the youth-to-adult unemployment ratio is more than four. Germany has the lowest ratio (1.3), largely thanks to its successful apprenticeship system. The OECD warns that recovery will be slow and forecasts that youth unemployment will still be around 20% by the end of 2011.
NZ’s Economic Recovery Stalls
What’s worse is that there are no signs that the situation is going to improve any time soon. New Zealand narrowly missed falling back into recession during the last quarter and its fragile recovery has ground to a halt. From the Financial Times
“The southern nation is in danger of slipping back into recession after its economy contracted by 0.2 per cent during the third quarter.
The unexpectedly weak gross domestic product figures for the three months ended September released by the government on Thursday cap a difficult year for the country. The strength of the New Zealand dollar has eroded exports, an increase in the goods and services tax has hit the retail sector, and an earthquake near the city of Christchurch in September caused massive disruption and insurance losses estimated at more than $4.5bn.
New Zealand was one of the world’s first advanced nations to enter recession in early 2008 and the economy contracted for five consecutive quarters. Its economic fortunes are in contrast to those of Australia, its top economic partner which managed to skirt recession…” Read the full article here
We flagged up NZ’s youth unemployment problems back in July this year:
Jobless NZ youth “A ticking time bomb”
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….
E2NZ.org 
I’d say not much has changed in the youth unemployment scene in New Zealand, many of them are being forced to go overseas for jobs, for example i met a young 26 year old man from Hamilton who was a sound engineer, could not find a job and had to leave, he decided to move to the US and somehow got work as a sound engineer
In the timesonline (UK) guest contributors section was a piece by Jamie Whyte, once which set out the disparity between what tourists see and what actually goes on. He said,
“NEW ZEALAND is a little, South Pacific version of 1950s England. People are friendly, trustworthy and hard-working. You can leave your front door unlocked when you go out. Women can safely walk alone at night and, if you drop your wallet, someone will deliver it to your door the next day. If you share this common view, then you are probably wrong about 1950s England and you are certainly wrong about contemporary New Zealand”.
Bust that bubble, Jamie!
He then went on to tell the truth – that New Zealand’s child murder rate is 0.9 per 100,000 children, compared with 0.4 in Britain and 0.1 in Spain. That physical abuse of female spouses is a popular pasttime in New Zealand and the women’s refuges are abrim with refugees. The overall murder rate is 2.5 per 100,000 people, compared with 1.5 in Britain. NZ has just as many assaults per person as Great Britain and 50 per cent more rapes. It is also poorer with a per capita GDP of $26,000 (£14,500), compared with $35,000 in Australia and $37,000 in Britain, with low productivity and higher cost of living to go with those very low wages. He pointed out that there is a discrepancy between the nice, clean, rich, friendly life that “tourists see” in the tourist towns, and “the rest of New Zealand” more off the beaten track (very true and I have lived here for quite some years now). New Zealand’s lower class men, of which there are a great many, “are inarticulate and unkempt to a degree that would appal even a chav”. They work in unskilled jobs or simply don’t work. Have no ambitions and no interests outside of sex and drugs. The pattern repeats for generations and generations.
I would like to add, and then the women are blamed for creating these “fatherless families”, when very often they are simply booting out a useless and vicious bad influence on their children.
Mr. Whyte blames this “subculture of listless depravity” for the murder rate of women and children. He does not use the word “predatory”, but I would use that one, certainly.
Based on what I have seen, they like to hem and haw in a long-winded manner about New Zealand’s problems, but the fact that they never actually do anything to change the fundamental reality of these basic bad conditions measn that the problems persist. All they do is learn techniques for not worrying, as a flimsy sort of plaster on a a festering cancer, but the facts remain unchanged. I have never met so many morons with their heads so firmly in the sand.
The average Kiwi is the most apathetic, laziest, devoid of personality, culturless and boring individual you could ever meet.
The smart ones are gone or about to leave this prison of a country.
I spoke with a fellow North American the other day who had lived here in New Zealand for 3 years and only ever got one small period of on-call seasonal cashier work at a large well-known retail outlet, which job she said was nightmarish. There are more than 50 people applying for each one of those sorts of jobs right now, she said. Her skills are considerably above that level. Like many immigrants, she has given up and decided to “study for something” and collect a student stipend for a few years instead. Nonetheless, the NZIS keeps publishing long skills lists. The ones who settle here successfully tend to have very low expectations, or are running away from something in their native lands. You cannot immigrate here with the idea that it will have the same level of anything as other countries such as Canada, the UK, US, Germany, S.A., and even others. As for those who move and like it here, I do not understand what their reasons are. I suspect they are merely too stuck or inertial to go back to their homelands, and have reprogrammed themselves to think their decision was a good one, or do not want to return with their tails between their legs.