Work and Income offices Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
James, a single parent to a 13-year-old son, says he's living quite happily on the benefit - but is worried about getting stuck.
The Whangārei man, whom RNZ has agreed not to identify, has been on sole parent support and Jobseeker Support for seven or eight years.
"To be really, really honest I stopped working at a pretty good paying job to get access to legal aid because I ran out of money trying to get access to my kiddo to begin with," he said.
"I've just gone back into study this year so will probably be on the sole parent benefit for at least another two years. I have fallen for the trap of becoming 100 percent reliant on it and I honestly believe it's taken this long to do something because life's too easy."
He receives $494.80 a week in sole parent support, $155 in accommodation supplement, $144.30 in family tax credit and $44.13 in temporary additional support, to a total of $838.23.
He pays rent of $450 a week with an additional $25 on top for water and other expenses.
"I live comfortably within my means but I also don't smoke, drink or have any sort of hire purchases, apart from fines as a young guy, or anything ticked up. I live in a nice two-bedroom townhouse with just me and my son … we even have harbour views."
He said even though they were comfortable, it was a limited life.
"Like a trip to the movies or circus or something is something that needs to be planned a month in advance and spontaneous drives to the Bay of Islands for coffee and cake simply don't happen. But in all reality we have everything we need."
There could be a generational aspect to receiving benefits, he said.
"My mum and dad only got jobs in the last 10 years or so and I know countless families off the top of my head where every single member, from grandparents to the ones turning 18 have never had jobs and likely never will.
"I lived in Aussie from 17 til I was 24 and after coming back here I almost feel like Northlanders in general have a kind of negative, blame everything and everyone else sort of attitude towards everything and anything."
Some more easily accessible support for addiction and mental health might help some people into work, he said.
Northland consistently has the highest proportion of its population on unemployment benefits.
In February, 11 percent of the working age population was receiving Jobseeker Support alone. That was well ahead of the next-highest, Gisborne at 9.4 percent. Tai Rāwhiti had significantly more people on supported living payments, which took it to a higher beneficiary count overall.
Both have nearly one in five of their working-age adult population on some form of benefits.
Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen, who grew up in Northland, said isolation was one reason for the problem, as was the difficulty of delivering services in some areas.
"Both [Northland and Tai Rāwhiti] have a high Māori population proportion, for a variety of reasons, getting the right services and supports to Māori communities is not working as well as it needs to, to reduce dependency."
Another Northland man said he was on the benefit for disability reasons.
"While I do counselling to work through childhood trauma I'm unable to work so my mental health doctor has given me a medical certificate to excuse me from job seeking duties while on a benefit."
He was flatting in someone's house and able to pay for things like Netflix and the gym if he wanted them, he said. "I feel extremely blessed that we have WINZ here in New Zealand so I have the option to work through and heal myself."
He said he was concerned about the number of people who could be out of work because of drug and alcohol addiction. "I lost 19 years to addiction I started when I was 12 due to having no support from child abuse. I fear others are in the same boat."
But Maria, who had been on sole parent support for 11 years said her experience was not as positive as the men's.
"I get by, by having had a sugar daddy, and being so desperate at times I've employed tactics to manipulate men … who might buy a meal for us all.
"When our manipulation of exploiting each other for needs becomes apparent, it explodes into domestic abuse and violence, and this has been a cycle I've been accustomed to for all these years. And I'd do it again, and continue to keep doing it if it means I can pay all the bills and push my kids through another day."
She said she often had to rely on food banks or charities for help.
She said her situation would be improved if her children's father could be made to offer her some assistance. "If not for the care of his children, then paying more than a mere $4.50 for each kid a week."
More government support could help, too, she said. "I would be glad to accept direct payment from the government to all our major and essential bill costs… all these essential costs we can tick up in advance on our benefits which is why I've accumulated almost $13,000 in debt."
'High levels of socio-economic deprivation'
Graham MacPherson, regional commissioner for the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in Northland, said the ministry had helped 4200 Northlanders off the benefit and into work in the past 12 months.
"In February 2025 we supported almost 400 people off benefit into work, 50 more than in February 2024."
He said the economy had a big impact on how many jobs were available.
"Northland also has high levels of socio-economic deprivation, which affects the opportunities people have access to, including employment. There are still jobs available and our employment teams work closely with employers, industries, local government as well as community training and employment providers to help people find and stay in work."
He said MSD contracted providers to work with people to build confidence and get them ready for work. Its youth service provided specialist service to people aged up to 24.
"We recently partnered with Far North Roading Group to deliver a 12-month cadetship programme, which has seen ten local job seekers take up apprenticeships within the company, and a further ten cadetship positions available in the coming months."
A careers expo in March was attended by more than 800 people, he said. "We know it is tough for people, but we'd like to encourage them to keep talking to us."
Bonnie Robinson, of the Salvation Army social policy and parliamentary unit, said many of the challenges in Northland had been there for a long time.
"A lot of the structural impediments to people being able to live a good life and better themselves… big picture stuff, the roads aren't great, housing is not great for a lot of people… the access to advanced healthcare is difficult in many places. Access to education can be difficult."
There were also more personal drivers, she said. "There's very high drug use, police can tell from waste water testing that the amount of meth consumed in Northland is significant."
She said support services needed to be flexible in what assistance they offered. "It's not just a lack of education, not just mental health or not just drugs and alcohol, it can be everything. Where people have complex situations going on it can take time.
"If people put in effort as an individual they need the structures and systems to support it. If you put in effort and still can't get public transport anywhere that's got a job, you've done your bit but the community hasn't done its bit."
'We've got so much potential here'
Far North District Council mayor Moko Tepania said the geography of the region created unique challenges.
In the Far North area, which does not include Whangārei and Kaipara, there are 75,000 people spread across 40 different towns.
Moko Tepania. Photo: Peter de Graaf
Tepania said that meant people who were looking for a job might find that the only work available was in a town 30 minutes or an hour away. If they did not have a vehicle there was no reliable public transport. The Far North does not have a bus service.
"We have a regional council funded bus that connects the west and east coasts of the far north every second day. That's not frequent enough to use it meaningfully to get to your job."
He said progress was being made on youth unemployment. The council has a contract with MSD to target people aged 16 to 24 not in education or training.
There were 1959 people meeting that definition in the Far North, he said, and 1104 of them on JobSeeker Support.
"In the last three years we have had this contract, we've managed to place 80 rangatahi into sustainable employment.
"That means 80 families have the positive impact of having a member in full time employment. We have a target of 30 this year, and so far we have reached 17. We are actively engaged in this space as a council."
He said Covid had hit the region hard, as well as the storms of 2023. The closure of the Brynderwyn portion of SH1 made access to the whole of Northland difficult, and the Mangamuka stretch of SH1 had been closed for two years.
"We've been hit and hit and hit, right? We have been down and out quite a bit. The big thing for me as the mayor is recovering from that and moving ahead."
He said Northland had so much potential.
"We have so much development ripe for the picking and we've been slowly filling in the jigsaw puzzle pieces to achieve that.
"Think about our land area and what that can do in terms of being the food basket for the nation - not just Kaipara providing 80 percent of the kūmara - we've seen that through central government giving us funding for water storage projects to unlock the horticultural potential of the region… everything is lining up.
"We can contribute to our country's wealth. We've got so much potential here. It's slowly ticking off all these boxes, all the interim steps, coming together in partnership between local government, iwi, central government and private business agencies," Tepania said.
"People keep coming in from Wellington to try to fix us. We can fix ourselves, give us the money and get out of the way. We've probably had the most pilot programmes of any region in the entire country but it's never sustainable funding. It's never sustainable models of recovery for us.
"The government comes in and gives us funding for something to fix a problem, that lasts a year and a half and then the government changes and they have a new idea to try something else. It's death by 1000 bloody pilot projects. We can come up with our own solutions to get us ahead. They just have to pass money over, get out of the way and make sure it's sustainable."
