$400 a day not enough to get off the dole for

Stuff reports:

New Zealanders aren’t taking short-term jobs because it’s not worth their time to do so, workers’ advocate say.
It was reported last week that there is a shortage of people to plant the trees required by the Government’s one billion trees by 2028 campaign.
Pay rates in the North Island are up to 60c a tree, or up to $400 a day if workers plant a tree a minute over 10 hours.

$400 a day is $2,000 a week or $100,000 a year. Yet they can’t find workers.

Worker advocate Chloe King said work such as the tree-planting roles often required people to shift to a rural location, uprooting their lives in the process.

Better to be in Auckland on the dole than earning $2,000 a week in a rural area eh.

“To make the $400 a day you’d have to plant 83 trees an hour over an eight-our work day, without taking a break, to make this kind of cash. I’ve spoken with seasoned tree-planters who say this would be nearly impossible as the work is back-breaking, especially in rugged terrain and varying temperatures and weather conditions.

Sure that may be hard to do. But let’s say they plant 60 an hour. They still earn $1,500 a week.