Latest news with #SusanEdmunds
Otago Daily Times
12 hours ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
What are people in hospo being paid?
By Susan Edmunds of RNZ People working in hospitality have been getting paid a rate that is closer and closer to the minimum wage over the years. The Restaurant Association has produced its latest remuneration report, which shows what people are being paid on average around the country. But economists say it also highlights how little many hospitality jobs are paying. A bar manager is now being paid an average $32.20 an hour, a barista $26.91, a breakfast chef $29.23. Café managers are earning an average $29.86, chef de partie $29.63, and duty managers $29.16. General managers are earning $44.85, head chefs $36.81 and kitchen hands $25.03. Sommeliers are getting $30.30 on average and wait staff $25.52. The minimum wage is $23.50. "Our latest remuneration survey reflects a sector that is steadily moving forward," said Marisa Bidois, chief executive of the Restaurant Association. "Despite continued cost pressures and tight operating margins, hospitality businesses are prioritising wage growth and creating structured pathways for career progression." The average hourly wage across the industry was $27.84, she said, up 2.54 percent from the previous year. Salaried roles edged up to an average of $83,415. She said the report showed clear wage progression in both kitchen and front-of-house roles. Entry-level positions started close to the minimum wage, but moved up. Head chefs were earning up to $46.62 an hour and general managers averaging $133,208 annually. Front-of-house roles follow a similar path, with senior management roles reaching $45 an hour or more, she said. Caterers and bar operators were earning some of the highest hourly rates, at $32.95 and $30.90 respectively "Whether you're starting out or already in leadership, there are opportunities to grow and earn more," Bidois said. 'Everyone has concerns about whether they will have a job' But Craig Renney, policy director and economist at the Council of Trade Unions said the average rate of wage growth cited in the report was less than the rate of inflation. "At best most workers are standing still." He said the sector had been hurt badly and had not fully recovered since Covid. "We don't have the same number of tourists and people are keeping their hands in their pockets. Everyone has concerns about whether they will have a job." He said it was concerning that people with skills, such as pastry chefs and sommeliers, were still earning only about $30 an hour. "That suggests there is very little return to education or training." People such as bar managers had legal obligations to consider, too, but were not getting much more than the living wage, he said. But he said there were not many restaurants in New Zealand that were sufficiently expensive to pay higher wages. Bidois said, for the first time, operators had reported that wage costs had reached an average 40 percent of outgoings. Renney said there had been little growth in the number of filled jobs in the sector. Since 2019, the number had only increased 4.3 percent. That was about half the rate of all sectors. Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, said accommodation and food services wages had not kept pace with an economy-wide increase in wages since the 1970s. "The exception was the very tight labour market during Covid-19, when hospitality wages rose faster - you can even see a little bit of this before the pandemic in 2018 and 2019. Essentially, prior to this point in time, employers in the industry didn't need to pay much because there was a relatively good supply of people to do the work." He said, apart from a rally between 2020 and 2022 due to those issues, average hospitality wages had been generally getting close to the minimum wage over time. "Hospitality pay rates, in relative terms, have actually improved between 2017 and 2022, but this lift is likely to have been driven by the very tight labour market more than anything else, and wage growth has slipped back over the last two or three years as the economy and spending growth have weakened and the unemployment rate has risen. "Putting current cyclical conditions aside, demographic projections suggest that the labour market will remain relatively tight over the medium-term as the population ages, which could create conditions for better wage growth in hospitality than prevailed between the 1980s and mid-2000s. "If the labour supply remains tight across the whole economy over the medium-term, then all industries will need to compete harder for labour, but the squeeze could be tightest in lower-paid industries such as retail and hospitality unless their pay rates lift significantly. "The alternative to paying a lot more for workers is to invest in labour-saving capital instead - we've seen this occurring in retail and hospitality over the last couple of decades already, and there was additional pressure during the pandemic, where QR codes for ordering etc reduced the need for wait staff, for example - so increasing wages is not the only part of the puzzle."
Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
KiwiSaver hardship withdrawals boom
By Susan Edmunds of RNZ and Nine to Noon More than 50,000 people made withdrawals from their KiwiSaver accounts on the basis of hardship in the year to June - compared to about 18,000 five years ago. KiwiSaver provider Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the increase started in 2023 and the reasons were easy to understand - the recession and cost-of-living crisis were putting ongoing pressure on people's budgets. "But some context - the number of hardship withdrawals were 1.6 percent members, and 0.3 percent of savings. The hardship, as is true for the wider society, is concentrated pain among a few." Sorted's personal finance lead Tom Hartmann told RNZ's Nine to Noon programme today it was likely the ability to withdraw from KiwiSaver was giving people "peace of mind" that if their situation worsened they could draw on their savings. The average withdrawal was $8800, he said. For someone in their 30s earning $75,000 a year, a withdrawal of that size in a year could reduce their not-inflation-adjusted final balance by about $40,000. Hartmann said there had not been an increase in savings suspensions, which indicated that the withdrawal was a temporary stop gap for people who would get back to making contributions. People can opt to stop contributing to KiwiSaver for a year at a time, and can renew the suspension at the end of the 12 months. The number of people on a savings suspension had dropped from 89,000 a year ago to 85,000. Hartmann said the key thing for people considering a withdrawal was to make it a last resort. "Typically, there are other sources of support that need to be explored first." Financial helpline MoneyTalks was one option, he said. "The team there have reporting seeing an increase in even middle-income people exploring their options." Eaqub said for people making a withdrawal, it was often a choice between "certain hardship today versus more savings later in life". But he said the situation was worse for those without KiwiSaver. "Many low-income people do not contribute to KiwiSaver because the employee contribution lowers their take home pay. "But they also miss out on the employer contribution and government subsidies. It means when non-contributors face hardship, they do not have this fallback." But Rupert Carlyon, founder of Koura KiwiSaver, said people on lower incomes could build up good balances. "Someone earning $60,000 contributing 3 percent will end be putting in [about] $3500 per year, so over 10 years plus returns that really adds up. "You can easily see a $60,000 salary becoming a $45,000 balance over 10 years. That is the power of KiwiSaver, we are often encouraging people to save that would not otherwise do it."
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Will changes to Working for Families leave people worse off?
By Susan Edmunds of RNZ An organisation representing financial mentors around the country is worried that proposed changes to the Working for Families scheme could leave some families worse off. As part of the Budget, the government said it would look at options to help avoid the issue of Working for Families debt. In the 2022 year, only 24 percent of households receiving weekly or fortnightly Working for Families payments and who were squared up by IRD at the end of the tax year had received the right amount of money. People who earned more than expected can end up with an overpayment debt that that they struggle to pay back. There is almost $300 million owed in Working for Families debt. A discussion document, on which submissions were sought, said the government's current thinking was that a quarterly assessment of Working for Families eligibility could strike the right balance between responsiveness, certainty and recipient effort. This would adjust what people were paid much more frequently. But Fleur Howard, chief executive of FinCap, said in a submission in response that she was worried that some families could be left without enough money. A shorter quarterly assessment period would be an improvement, she said, but it needed to be refined. "Aspects of the proposed design appear to suit some whānau situations better than others. We are concerned that in its current state, this design would have a disproportionally negative impact on those who are already experiencing financial instability due to more fluctuations in payment amount." She said FinCap's internal data showed most financial mentor clients had a weekly budget deficit even after they had received help. "More often than not, this deficit is due to whānau trying to pay for essentials, and commonly going into debt to do so. "This, among other markers, points to the fact that government support is not currently adequate to cover living expenses. We have concerns that some of the proposed changes would exacerbate income inadequacy in certain scenarios, particularly for whānau who need that money week to week." She said an example used in the discussion document, outlining a situation where a woman on the sole parent benefit went into additional work for a short period of time, highlighted a potentially unacceptable outcome. In that case, the woman's Working for Families credits would be reduced by $130 a week for the quarter after her temporary work, even though she was no longer in work, because the calculation was based on the higher income from the previous quarter. "We can see that the 'lagged income' mechanism makes sense from the perspective of achieving accuracy, however the potential for a decreased payment below what a whānau is entitled to poses real risk for wellbeing and social participation. "There is also a real concern over the dynamic whereby a quarterly period of higher income followed by a quarterly period of low income would see increased hardship within the low-income period, due to those payments reflecting the past higher income. "While this could be squared up during the end of year process, our data tells us that most whānau living week to week need that money as part of their weekly payments." Howard said mentors were also concerned something similar could happen if someone lost a job and went on the benefit, because their reduced income would not show up in the Working for Families calculation for another quarter. "Whānau need every cent they are entitled to in a timely manner when events such as job loss occur." A solution could be for the quarterly assessment period to look forward, rather than backwards, she said.
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Will Working for Families changes leave people worse off?
By Susan Edmunds of RNZ An organisation representing financial mentors around the country is worried that proposed changes to the Working for Families scheme could leave some families worse off. As part of the Budget, the government said it would look at options to help avoid the issue of Working for Families debt. In the 2022 year, only 24 percent of households receiving weekly or fortnightly Working for Families payments and who were squared up by IRD at the end of the tax year had received the right amount of money. People who earned more than expected can end up with an overpayment debt that that they struggle to pay back. There is almost $300 million owed in Working for Families debt. A discussion document, on which submissions were sought, said the government's current thinking was that a quarterly assessment of Working for Families eligibility could strike the right balance between responsiveness, certainty and recipient effort. This would adjust what people were paid much more frequently. But Fleur Howard, chief executive of FinCap, said in a submission in response that she was worried that some families could be left without enough money. A shorter quarterly assessment period would be an improvement, she said, but it needed to be refined. "Aspects of the proposed design appear to suit some whānau situations better than others. We are concerned that in its current state, this design would have a disproportionally negative impact on those who are already experiencing financial instability due to more fluctuations in payment amount." She said FinCap's internal data showed most financial mentor clients had a weekly budget deficit even after they had received help. "More often than not, this deficit is due to whānau trying to pay for essentials, and commonly going into debt to do so. "This, among other markers, points to the fact that government support is not currently adequate to cover living expenses. We have concerns that some of the proposed changes would exacerbate income inadequacy in certain scenarios, particularly for whānau who need that money week to week." She said an example used in the discussion document, outlining a situation where a woman on the sole parent benefit went into additional work for a short period of time, highlighted a potentially unacceptable outcome. In that case, the woman's Working for Families credits would be reduced by $130 a week for the quarter after her temporary work, even though she was no longer in work, because the calculation was based on the higher income from the previous quarter. "We can see that the 'lagged income' mechanism makes sense from the perspective of achieving accuracy, however the potential for a decreased payment below what a whānau is entitled to poses real risk for wellbeing and social participation. "There is also a real concern over the dynamic whereby a quarterly period of higher income followed by a quarterly period of low income would see increased hardship within the low-income period, due to those payments reflecting the past higher income. "While this could be squared up during the end of year process, our data tells us that most whānau living week to week need that money as part of their weekly payments." Howard said mentors were also concerned something similar could happen if someone lost a job and went on the benefit, because their reduced income would not show up in the Working for Families calculation for another quarter. "Whānau need every cent they are entitled to in a timely manner when events such as job loss occur." A solution could be for the quarterly assessment period to look forward, rather than backwards, she said.
RNZ News
6 days ago
- RNZ News
Mother challenges MOE over 'outdated' school holidays model
One Tauranga mother is challenging the Ministry of Education over what she says is an outdated model for school holidays. Karina Tendler told RNZ the number of breaks kids have during the year seems to rely on an outdated expectation that families have one parent home all the time. Money correspondent Susan Edmunds looked into the issue and spoke to Melissa Chan-Green. Tags: To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
