Abolition of unemployment
by Gareth Morgan on March 3, 2011
There will be no clear division between unemployment and employment. People will remain on the same benefit as their hours of work move up and down from zero to what is now considered full-time.
Only earnings will matter, hours of work will be irrelevant for most decisions. The traps and rewards attached to certain numbers of hours will largely disappear except for some areas such as conditionality and childcare support.
How this will affect some things which are passported by unemployment is unclear, even concessionary rates for tickets often use unemployment as a test.
Comments
That seems to be a positive move – again, “hours” seems to have been a misguided proxy for something else, often leading to unintended consequences.
(Cash) benefits ultimately are intended to support people who otherwise would not have enough money to pay for what society thinks are essentials – whether they work 0, 5, 15 or 25 hours should not matter.