Shovel-ready jobs fall short

Just over half as many people will be employed in jobs created by the Government’s ‘‘shovel-ready’’ infrastructure programme after the Government slashed forecast jobs created by the scheme to 11,740.

Ahead of the election, the Government promised ‘‘more than 20,000’’ jobs would be created by the infrastructure projects, which were announced to kick-start the economy following the Covid lockdown.

National Party MP Louise Upston, who obtained the revised numbers in written parliamentary questions, said the change represented a broken promise.

She called on Finance Minister Grant Robertson to make good on the jobs promise.

‘‘You committed to a number. Where is it? Where are those jobs and when are they going to be delivered?’’

Last July, the Government announced it would spend $2.6 billion on more than 150 infrastructure projects that were so close to being built they were deemed ‘‘shovel ready’’.

The Government said the projects would create 20,000 jobs, a number which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern campaigned on at the 2020 election as part of her five-point Covid recovery plan.

The figure was mentioned in speeches by Ardern, press releases from Robertson and in social media posts from the Labour Party.

But less than a year later, Robertson told Upston the number of jobs created by the shovel-ready scheme would be 11,740 fulltime equivalents.

When asked why the numbers were so different, Robertson said the press release numbers were ‘‘estimates’’ provided by ‘‘third parties’’.

‘‘The figures for jobs in the press releases were the estimates based on the data provided by third parties at the time and included in applications made to the Infrastructure Reference Group in April 2020.

‘‘These job numbers are then validated during due diligence of the projects and adjusted accordingly after engineering reviews,’’ Robertson said in his reply to Upston’s question.

Upston said Robertson was obliged to make good on the 20,000 jobs promised.

While the shovel-ready projects are under-delivering on new jobs, the Government can claim to have over-delivered on reducing the unemployment rate.

Forecasts throughout last year saw the unemployment rate hitting double digits and Treasury’s Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update had the unemployment rate rising to 7.7 per cent in the June quarter of this year.

Instead, Stats NZ reported the unemployment rate fell to 4.9 per cent in the December 2020 quarter, after peaking at 5.8 per cent in September.

The Government faced similar problems when it came to jobs created by Provincial Growth Fund projects, with many of the promised jobs failing to materialise.

Figures released last month showed 7000 people in full and part-time jobs thanks to the PGF.