Today, it was announced by the government that the redundancy advantage figures decreased by nearly 500 for the last month.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, stated, "This is in stark contrast to the same time last year, when the number of people on the unemployment benefit actually increased by 4200". She said that Maori reported for three-quarters of the fall.

It has been said that last month, about 4654 people called off the joblessness profit and went into work - 1346 of them Maori, and 346 Pacific Islanders.

Bennett said that work and Income programmed 4500 new jobs last month.

Figures aged between 18 and 24 on an advantage decreased by 379 in April, while complete profit figures increased by less than 1% (0.8%) to 327,462. Now, there were about 59,715 on the joblessness profit.

Bennett said that she wishes to see a few more quarters of job development before getting "too excited" about data presenting joblessness has fallen to 6%.

Yesterday, the Household Labour Force Survey revealed that the figure of unemployed dropped by 25,000 during the March quarter.

According to Michael Barnett, Chief Executive of the chamber its surveys in the recent quarters revealed that increasing businesses going through staff recruiting difficulties.