The government plans to means test the parents of 18 and 19-year-olds applying for a JobSeeker benefit. If the parents make about $65,500 combined, their teenager will not be eligible for a benefit.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has told young unemployed people to get off the couch, stop playing PlayStation, and go find a job because there are lots of them.
But 1st Call Recruitment general manager Angela Singleton told Checkpoint the prime minister was being optimistic about the realities of the job market in 2025.
She said the number of available jobs was about 50-70 percent down in a lot of sectors across the country, with "very limited" use of temporary labour at the moment.
"This is the worst we've seen in New Zealand since 2005."
She said there was more downturn in the demand for labour than during the global financial crisis.
"We've been a trajectory upwards ever since 2005, this has probably been the longest deepest, slowest market for the past 24 months.
"You can speak to all my colleagues, all my competitors, we all mix in the same circles. It's a very, very tight market out there."
Luxon's claims that young workers could just move to another area to find work also did not hold up to reality, said Singleton.
"There will be pockets of regional New Zealand that will always have a dire need for staff. If you look at Queenstown, it's very little accommodation with a booming economy down there, their job market looks very, very different to the rest of the country.
"So the job market is still buoyant in some areas, but when you're talking contract work for eight or 12 weeks to pick fruit, you can't expect someone to relocate from Auckland for a eight to 12 week period, it's just not feasible."
She said they had people crying in their offices on a daily basis - "It's all walks of life, it's all ages and stages, it's really difficult."
Earlier today, Luxon told Morning Report there were jobs available for young people, and if they could not find a job they should go into further education and training.
"If you go outside of Wellington, to Hawke's Bay or go to the South Island... The primary industries, for example in horticulture [and] in our growing industries, they are crying out for young people to come and join those sectors and those jobs," Luxon said.
"They do have jobs. Often what happens is the people will take a job, they don't stick with it for longer than a couple of days, they don't show up on time."
But Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the government had failed to create more jobs, and failed to reduce the number of people on the benefit.
"This is a government that's utterly failed to create jobs.
"They've, in fact, seen 36,000 jobs disappear under their leadership."
