The population of Christchurch is on welfare.

 The population of Christchurch is on welfare. Or at least the equivalent number of New Zealanders are:

"Benefit numbers are out for September," writes Lindsay Mitchell:

Up again. There are now 417,000 working age people on a main benefit.

Christchurch, New Zealand's second largest city, has a population of 411,000. Think about that.

Up until the mid seventies the percentage of 18-64 year-olds on a benefit never exceeded two. One person in fifty. Right now it's 12.9 percent, or one in eight.

Every type of main benefit is up - Jobseeker, Sole Parent and Supported Living.

This is not a sign of success. 

But it's even worse than you might imagine. As Dan Mitchell (no relation) writes: "to fully understand the level of dependency in a country, you have to know the share of people who actually produce value compared to those who live off of government."

Mitchell, D. calls it the ratio of moochers to producers. Here’s his chart for four major European nations. "In every case," he notes, "the number of people riding in the wagon is greater than the number of people (the orange bars) pulling the wagon."

The ratio in France is especially bad, which may explain why there’s a strong case that it will be the first domino when the next fiscal crisis occurs (as it almost certainly will).

Appropriate then that it was a French economist, Frédéric Bastiat, who observed way back in 1848 that "the State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else."

"It works for a while," notes Michael Arouet, "as long as markets buy more sovereign debt at reasonable interest rates. The party ends when they stop though. For France, they stopped this month, Belgium will be next."

So how do you think New Zealand ranks in this sad statistic? Answer: Better than these four, but only just. The ratio is virtually one-to-one.

This is the (welfare) state we're in. Every worker is involuntarily carrying one other person on their back. And this is long after the so-called "neoliberal experiment" we've all "endured" since the 1980s. 

Here for comparison is the same chart for NZ in the mid-sixties, long before "neoliberalism" was even a buzzword on a Jane Kelsey book subtitle:

The trend is clear. Two-to-one (roughly) has become one-to-one. Or to think of it in absolute terms, while the producers have grown just over three times since then, the number of those for whom they're providing largesse has enjoyed a five-fold growth!

Is this sustainable?

And since "the number-one goal of politicians is to retain power, and the number of voters living off the government is now virtually the same as the number of voters paying for government, it’s very likely politicians will fight to preserve the status quo." And you know what that means.  "Indeed," says Mitchell, D., "this depressing observation is why I put together my 17th Theorem of Government":

That said, there are still grounds for hope. People can wake up.  As he said to a TV audience back in 2009, "parasites should understand they need a healthy host."

* * * * 

Source for European figures Michael A. Arouet. Bibliography of sources for NZ figures:

Current NZ figures (2025–26)

1. Ministry of Social Development. Benefit Fact Sheets: National level data tables, June 2026 (via Figure.NZ, “People receiving main benefits in New Zealand”). https://figure.nz/chart/DQumSxjiCtroXlcC (working-age welfare, about 413,700, which I summed from the four benefit types).
2. Ministry of Social Development. Annual Report 2024/25: Key stats. https://msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/corporate/annual-report/2025/key-stats-for-2024-25.html (NZ Super, about 941,500).
3. Public Service Commission Te Kawa Mataaho. Workforce size. https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/data/workforce-data/public-sector-composition/workforce-size (core Public Service of 63,912 FTEs; Crown entities, Police and Defence of about 132,933 FTEs; wider public sector of about 477,400; total workforce of 2,450,500).
4. OECD via FRED. Working-Age Population Total: From 15 to 64 Years for New Zealand. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTNZQ647N (3,445,300, Q4 2025).

Mid-1960s NZ figures

5. Department of Statistics. New Zealand Official Year-Book, 1966, Section 6A (Social Security) and Section 3 (Population). https://www3.stats.govt.nz/New_Zealand_Official_Yearbooks/1966/NZOYB_1966.html(superannuation, age, widows’, unemployment, emergency and miners’ benefit counts at 31 March 1965; 1961 census population aged 15–64).
6. An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), “Staffing the State Services”, via Te Ara. https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/government-administrative-system/page-9 (about 142,000 central government employees, 31 March 1964).
7. An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), “History of Monetary Benefits”, via Te Ara. https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/welfare-services/page-2 (1,176,100 people covered by benefits, about 45% of the population).
8. An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), “Employment” (Department of Labour survey), via Te Ara. https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/27974/print (basis for the private-sector estimate).

Derived numbers (calculations from published figures)

• Private sector, 2025–26: about 1.97 million, from the 2,450,500 total workforce minus the 477,400 public sector (source 3).
• Private sector, mid-1960s estimate: about 599,500, from the survey’s roughly 741,500 employees (source 8) minus the 142,000 central government employees (source 6). This is a rough lower bound.
• Welfare, mid-1960s: about 17,900, from summing the individual benefit counts in source 5. The widows’ benefit count (14,529) is my inference from the order of the yearbook text.
• All percentages and shares: simple division, using the figures above.