Canterbury spike bucks unemployment trend

Canterbury has bucked the national jobless figures trend, the region showing a spike in the number of people on the unemployment benefit while nationally numbers are down.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said unemployment
beneficiary numbers had fallen consecutively for the past five months,
and 800 fewer people were on benefits than in May.

There were now 56,264 people on an unemployment benefit, compared with 68,369 in January.

"Predictions had unemployment benefits rising to about 100,000
post-recession, but we never reached those levels and in fact it has
decreased by more than 9000 in the last nine months," she said.

Nearly half the decrease in unemployment benefits over the past year was made up of young people aged 18-24.

"Last month 7800 people went off welfare, into work and it's
particularly positive that more than 2700 young people cancelled
benefits for jobs."

There were 327,817 people on all benefits in June.

There were 6342 people on unemployment benefits in Canterbury, 962 more than the week before the February earthquake.

However, since that earthquake total benefit numbers in Canterbury have decreased by 670.