Somewhat of an exaggeration

Jordan claims on his blog that under seven years of Labour, unemployment has dropped from 140,000 to 36,000 or so.

The official measure of unemployment is the Household Labour Force Survey, seasonally adjusted. It has unemployment as at Sep 2006 as 83,000. Also in December 1999 it was 119,000. So a decrease (which is still good) of 36,000 not 104,000.

Incidentally National managed to get it down from 185,000 in Sep 2001 to 119,000 in Dec 1999. And it had got it even lower than that in 1995 and 1996 but the Asian Crisis then pushed it back up again. But still a decrease of 66,000 over eight years compared to 36,000 decrease over seven years.

And before anyone points out the obvious, yes National did take power nine months before Sep 1991. But it inherited a bankrupt economy from Labour with skyrocketing unemployment (up 30,000 in 1990) and an election alone doesn’t reverse a trend. It takes around nine months to get your first budget passed, to change labour laws, and for this to impact the economy.

In fact it is a damn lot harder to reverse a trend of rising unemployment (as was the case in 1990) then it is to continue a trend of falling unemployment (as was the case in 1999).

In 1990 unemployment increased by 30,000 while in 1999 unemployment dropped by 26,000. Which economy would you rather inherit?