10. Question No. 10—Social Development and EmploymentHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development and EmploymentQuestion No. 10—Social Development and Employment10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: When will the Government start publicly reporting on the number of jobs created from all its employment initiatives to support the 196806 recipients of jobseeker support into paid employment?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): We do report. In fact a report came out today called the household labour force survey and it showed more New Zealanders finding paid employment. Unemployment has dropped again—now down to 4.7 percent. It is also important to note that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) does not have any job creation initiatives but what we do do is we have initiatives that create job-ready people. These job-ready people add value to the businesses who are growing and need staff but without the whole-of-Government approach to create the economic conditions from which businesses can thrive we would have nowhere to send our work-ready people. A strong economy is the best job creation scheme possible and our Minister of Finance is delivering. This Government is a team that is making progress on a number of fronts and today's unemployment figures show our teamwork is paying off.Hon Louise Upston: What other employment initiatives are like the shovel-ready projects where only half the jobs promised in Beehive press releases will be delivered?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I think as I said there are a range of initiatives. There are so many Ministers and ministries Government agencies involved in the employment space—everyone from the Department of Conservation the Ministry for Culture and Heritage preparing people for work and also the Ministry for Primary Industries. This is an all-of-Government response to the pandemic with regards to supporting people into employment.Hon Louise Upston: If there are so many Ministers working on this issue why can't the Minister deliver a simple answer in terms of how many jobs are being created when and where?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: If we just refer to the job vacancies in March on SEEK and on TradeMe—on SEEK we saw a 55 percent increase in job vacancies up from a year ago; on TradeMe we saw a 22 percent increase in job vacancies up from a year ago. I think that's pretty good evidence that not only are we doing our job as a Government but businesses have been supported to be resilient during a very difficult time.Hon Louise Upston: If the Minister is so convinced there are so many jobs out there why is she failing to support the nearly 200000 people who don't have a job are on jobseeker benefit and don't have enough money to put food on the table and a roof over their own heads?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The member knows that we have just gone through—or are coming through—a thing called COVID-19. The forecasts were very dim but we have managed to actually do better than every expectation that was in them. I also want to remind the member who has been around for a long time that out of the 200000 people that are on job seeker about 118000 of them are job seekers that are work-ready and about 78000 of them are actually job seekers with health conditions or disabilities. We're committed to working with them to actually support their overall wellbeing so that they can get into employment as well. That's a very important differentiation that that member always conveniently forgets.Hon Louise Upston: Why can the Minister not provide answers about the number of jobs created by the Employment Education and Training Ministers Group that she co-chairs when the focus of that group is to work with other agencies to develop a job creation measurement framework that will support consistent reporting across the range of job creation programmes."?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That work is ongoing. However what I will say—I will offer one example of many that are in place where agencies are working together. That example is the Apprenticeship Boost where MSD has been working effectively with Education to create opportunities for apprenticeships and now we have something like I think 22000 new apprentice accounts created because of that. That's a very big improvement on what we saw under the global financial crisis when there was no investment in apprenticeships and we ended up having big gaps with regards to workforce shortages in trades."