Getting a job is HARD but getting multi-billion dollar bailouts is EASY!

Memories of a dole-bludging neppo-baby

May 17, 2026

Kia Ora Papatūānuku te Iwi

Greetings Earthlings

As of writing, our country’s unemployment rate is 5.3% which is a slight decrease from the previous quarter. For the last few years it’s been on the up & up. Of course when unemployment gets high, youth unemployment gets higher.

We are seeing bits & bobs in the media about it while some of the rhetoric we’ve heard recently has been slightly… triggering for me. The ever so pervasive stereo type of the lazy & entitled youth, not wanting to work is more prominent than ever.

Youth are being told by their own Prime Minister to “go where the jobs are” and accusing them of staying home & playing video games, all while cutting funding to apprenticeship schemes, increasing tertiary fees by 6%(almost twice as high as inflation) and more recently, removing fees free for final years studies at university.

…Oh & there is a new parental income test for 18 – 19 year olds needing to receive the benefit. If their parents earn more than $65,000 per year combined, they do not qualify. $65,000 is a little over minimum wage. One can have two parents on minimum wage & still disqualify for this benefit. Make no mistake, this is intentional!

Currently I am fortunate to have a full time job, it’s a short commute away from home and while not a dream job, is still a pretty good one to have. It was not always like this for me. This current economy and job market we are in has brought back memories for me. I was part of the generation that left school in the 2000s and went on to tertiary studies.

In 2008 the global financial crisis hit, there was a credit crunch that rippled throughout the entire global economy, including Aotearoa New Zealand. My generation had to find a job in the economic ruins of that crash. In 2011 we had the Christchurch earth quakes and then the re-build.

Throughout the 2010s if you wanted a job, people expected you to go down to Christchurch and work. “beggars can’t be choosers” was a common motto used by commentators.

I was in Auckland and had no interest in moving to another city. I love Auckland & it’s where my family & most of my friends live.

For the longest time I could not even get an interview, sending my CV out to multiple employers, daily. In 2009 I went on the job seekers benefit. While on that benefit I had to maintain a list of job ads I applied for. Back then we wrote them down on a form for WINZ, then had to take it into their office and give it to the case worker. I even remember which branch I attended. That branch has now closed, like so many other amenities that used to be on that same stretch of road.

But!

I was not completely unemployed, I was still working as a part time teacher in the Adult Community Education(ACE) sector. Rewind to 2006, it was a job I only got because my former teacher who taught that same night course, wanted someone to replace him. I was 18 at the time and doing a pre-trade course, when he asked me if I wanted the job and I gladly said yes. That was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and was a job that saw me through the economic downturn. It was just simply a cool job. I loved teaching adults students.

Back to 2009, for a number of months I ping-ponged from temp job to temp job.

How temping agencies work;

You would apply for job online, they would email or call you to arrange an interview, you would go to the agency, fill out a couple of forms; usually the agency’s form/employment contract then the IRD tax form, be interviewed, then told either… “We’ll call you when jobs are available” or “such and such company needs workers in their factory by 6pm tonight, are you available?” It will usually be 5:46pm, the agency’s office in Penrose and the job is in Wiri. It was/is expected that you have a full drivers license and your own reliable transport( indeed those were often questions asked in those agency forms).

On any given day often agencies would call you about 30 to 15 minutes before a shift(if you were lucky) and ask if you could make it to a company by a given time & to report to so and so when you get there. Of course you technically had the right to turn down a job, but understanding every “no” goes on their unspoken record & makes them less likely to call you for future available jobs. The reason for the “no” answer does NOT matter to them.

The prejudice is real, I remember at the odd interview I would get asked about “gaps in my CV?” I had to explain about job seeking. They would look back at you accusingly, as if having a gap in ones CV is sinful. And remember this was job agencies not even companies.

I even remember the nature of the job advertisements, “experience not required but advantageous” was a constant slogan used in job ads back then. A tight job market means that employers are more “picky” with who they hire and job seekers are less picky about which jobs they apply for. As a consequence this means that jobs that would often hire entry level candidates & be willing to offer on the job training, hired experienced candidates because they needed less/no training.

Companies view training as a cost and no longer as an investment. That combined with AI taking over most entry level jobs means that it has now become even harder for younger people to enter the workforce.

In late 2010 I got a job. That’s right!

I went to the interview & got the job. What an achievement, while so many of my peers were still struggling to find employment.

I would love to say that I worked hard for it & was hired solely for my credentials, but in reality I had few credentials back then. The only reason I even stood a chance at getting the job was because my Dad new a friend of a friend.

Yup! That’s right earthlings, I got this job through nepotism. My first two permanent jobs I ever got were through connections I had rather than my qualifications. As the old saying goes, “it’s who you know not what you know”.

Remember the part time teaching job? In early 2010, John Key cut funding to ACE and because we in the ACE sector kicked up a big stink & protested our butts off, in late 2011 funding for that course and a few others got re-instated & I got that job back. Sadly there were still many other courses that were NOT reinstated. Something about courses needing to be literacy & numeracy focused… This should sound familiar.

And much like the part time teacher job in ACE, I technically had no business getting this job. I had no relevant qualifications and was woefully inexperienced. While I am grateful for those connections that enabled me to gain employment I am acutely aware that not everyone has that privilege. It is around that same time where rhetoric about the younger generation started to become more spiteful.

You see… Another thing that happened in the early 2010s was the sudden rise of house prices over a relatively short period of time. In 2005 the average house value was roughly 4.8 times the average income. By 2017 that increased to 6.4 times.

One moment the GFC hit,

“nek minute!”

Houses in South Auckland were selling for one point something million dollars. Unrelated… Remember news outlets started running stories about how this and that young person “defied the odds” and bought a house, then when you read the article, somewhere buried deep into the article they’d mention how their Mum works for a bank and they inherited a $50,000 classic car from Grandpa?

I remember those… I remember them fondly.

As I mentioned earlier we had the Christchurch rebuild, and that in a warped way functioned as a sort of economic stimulus. I personally think that’s why from the outside at least, our economy during the 2010s was viewed as a “rock star economy”, remember that? There was quite a bit of economic activity… in one corner of the country.

Of course it wasn’t very rockstar-ish if;

· you were a job seeker struggling to find stable employment.

· just made redundant/laid off without the guarantee of a redundancy package.

· lost $70,000 in retirement savings in your late 60s, from the collapse of bluechip investments.

Remember Hanover and Bridgecorp?

But it was very rockstar-ish for Banks, insurance companies and finance companies who received massive bailouts from The New Zealand Government.

No concerns about where we are going to get the money from when it came to bailouts, no concerns about socialism for corporations, no concerns for Nana state propping up business who had direct or indirect contributions to the economic crash, no concerns for personal responsibility of the CEO’s who lost peoples life savings, no concerns about burdening future generations with the cost of corporate bailouts.

But…

If you are a young person; you are not entitled to help from the government, you are expected to take responsibility for yourself, you are expected to pay back your debts, you are expected to be frugal with money and you are expected to do all of this and not complain.

I remember those days, today is history on loop.

Ngā Mihi nui

Cristina

Cristina

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