Eric Crampton of the economics department of the University of Canterbury is a fine economist. Some months ago he estimated conservatively that the abolition of the youth minimum wage has cost the country over 9000 jobs.
Eric noted that youth unemployment during the current recession, relative to adult unemployment in prior recessions, seemed very high.
More evidence on this point is shown in the graph below (taken from The Economist).
It indicates that New Zealand’s current youth unemployment rates are an outlier relative to other OECD countries.
Click to enlarge
The further north a country is, measured on the perpendicular from the ‘four times as high’ line, the worse youth unemployment is relative to adult unemployment. Only Sweden and Luxembourg have worse youth unemployment outcomes than New Zealand relative to adult rates.
That is former Green MP Sue Bradford’s legacy to New Zealand. We are talking here about the…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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