There's a fair chance New Zealand's unemployment rate will hit a four-year high when official labour market figures are released on Wednesday, February 5.
The labour market data is the last key economic release ahead of the Reserve Bank's first review of the Official Cash Rate for the year on February 19. And it seems unlikely there will be anything in the figures to put the central bank off its near-promise to drop the OCR another 50 basis points to 3.75%. Remember, before the RBNZ began cuts in August 2024 the OCR was sitting on a cycle peak of 5.50%.
Remember also, that the current Coalition Government removed the requirement for the RBNZ to achieve maximum sustainable employment alongside the achieving of inflation between 1% to 3%. Which is not to say the labour market isn't still a big consideration for the central bank because high wages could affect inflation, or high unemployment could have considerable economic and financial stability ramifications.
So, it still matters a lot.
As of the September quarter 2024 our unemployment rate hit 4.8%, up from 4.6% in the June quarter. Since troughing at just 3.2% in the September 2022 quarter, our rate of unemployment has risen quite swiftly.
The RBNZ is picking the figure for the December 2024 quarter will be 5.1% and it sees unemployment peaking at 5.2% in the March 2025 quarter before slowly declining again, to hit 4.8% by the end of the year. (The RBNZ reckons unemployment will still be 4.4% going into 2027.)
At time of writing I haven't seen all the bank economists' previews of the labour market figures, but there seems to be a reasonable level of agreement that a figure of somewhere just over 5% will be what we get for the December quarter.
Highest since the pandemic spike
If so, that will be the first time our unemployment has hit 5% since a very brief spike to 5.2% in the September 2020 quarter after the onset of the pandemic early that year. Before that one-off knock, the last time we saw unemployment of 5% was as long ago as the end of 2016.
While it's never good to see people losing jobs, if the peak rate in this cycle ends up being about 5.2% then in terms of historical perspectives we won't have done too badly, particularly not when we consider that our last two quarterly GDP out-turns have been a drop of 1.1% in June 2024 and a drop of 1.0% in the September 2024 quarter.
The long recession of the early 1990s was a shocker and we saw unemployment peak at 11.2% in the 1991 September quarter and remain high for a long time after. At the end of 1998 there was another mini-peak of 7.9%.
After that the next big downtime was the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, which saw unemployment peak at 6.6%, but recover only slowly. In fact the rate was above 5% all the way from March 2009 till the end of 2016.
Here's a graph courtesy of the RBNZ (using Statistics NZ data), which puts the current situation into a nice historical perspective:
Unemployment's what the economists like to call a 'lagging indicator'. What that means in layperson's terms is that the unemployment rate will tend to reflect what HAS BEEN happening with the economy, not WHAT IS happening. Unemployment tends to start rising late in the economic cycle and then start dropping as the next one is already under way.
With the RBNZ now nearly six months into an interest rate easing cycle things are beginning to turn up again - at least in terms of sentiment if not necessarily yet in clear-cut visible tangible ways. It may well be that the economy stopped going backwards in the December quarter, although we won't find that out officially for a while.
A turning tide?
And there are even some early signs that the old lagging indicator of unemployment may be on the verge of turning.
Stats NZ's Monthly Employment Indicators (MEI) are taken from Inland Revenue data so are quite different in source to the official unemployment measure, which comes from Stats NZ's own Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS).
But the MEI has proven in the past to be a good indicator of future employment trends - and it's now on the improve after a dire trot during last year. There was seven consecutive months of falls in filled jobs from April to October 2024 - but the last two months have seen positive figures. Only mildly positive, but positive nevertheless.
All of which does maybe point toward a peak in the official unemployment numbers soon.
What would be the RBNZ view if the unemployment numbers do start coming down maybe sooner than it expects? Well, it's main concern would be if this fires up inflation. It will therefore be keeping a close eye on wage rises.
Private sector average hourly earnings as recorded by Stats NZ's Quarterly Employment Survey (which is part of the suite of labour market measures to be released in the coming week) saw a peak increase of 8.5% in the year to September 2022.
As of September 2024 that annual figure was down to 3.2% and the RBNZ is forecasting a further fall - to 2.8% - for the 2024 calendar year. If the figure is in around that level, there'll be no concerns from the RBNZ.
With that, I will leave you with a couple of comments from big bank economists.
What the economists say...
ASB senior economist Mark Smith, who picking 5.1% unemployment in line with the RBNZ pick, says he continues to expect more "labour market slack" to accrue over the first half of 2025.
"The primary driver is expected to be the weaker demand for labour, with economic activity expected to remain subdued until an economic recovery unfolds later this year," he said.
"Soft demand and the weak backdrop for corporate profitability is slowing business activity and hiring. Overall employment levels are expected to edge lower until a modest recovery takes place later in 2025. Our expectation is that firms will carefully manage employee headcount until then."
ANZ economist Henry Russell and senior strategist David Croy, who are picking 5.1% as well, note that a 50 basis point cut to the OCR has been well signalled by RBNZ policymakers. Economic data releases since the November MPS "haven’t challenged that guidance".
"We don’t expect the Q4 [fourth-quarter] labour market data to shift the dial either," they say.
"While typical survey volatility in the HLFS can deliver surprises on the day, we don’t see it likely that such a surprise could alter the broader economic narrative.
"Past loosening in the labour market appears to have generated sufficient spare economic capacity to return underlying inflation to the target midpoint.
"Looking forward, timely indicators, such as our Business Outlook, suggest economic activity is gradually recovering. The pace of recovery from here, and how vigorously the labour market eventually responds to that will key for the RBNZ’s policy assessment."
*This article was first published in our email for paying subscribers first thing Friday morning. See here for more details and how to subscribe.
123 Comments
yes but we are not employing them at my work in IT... reduction in our workforce... perhaps they are retail managers and restaurant cooks?
Perhaps they are family of existing migrant... there is a lot of this happening.
YOU ARE FOOLING YOURSELF THINKING THIS IS A FAIR TRADE.
This is true. Probably related to the fact you need to have a higher qualification to get in as a 'skilled worker' vs being born here. Was able to find this:
https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/80898/how-educational-…
Not that the bar in that article is very high.
However, if they even keep the stats (and how would they collate the data without exit cards) I haven't been able to find anything on the education makeup of NZ emigrants.
Everyone knows someone - those I know and have met all had degrees (mostly Masters, some bachelors and a few PhD), but that is a sample of such small size that no conclusions can be drawn from it.
Without the collection of such data, how can anyone say with certainty
"our emigrants have a lower education rate than our average citizenry."?
Or do you have a recent source for that you'd care to cite? (I'll note Glass &Choy, 2002 - but check the stated limitations of the study, and consider the time period it covers and the changes in the NZ tetiary education scene since. Also note it shows emigrants being less qualified than immigrants but still more qualified than those who stayed).
1. That's not a citation.
2. ABS reports 55% of NZ by birth in Oz have post-secondary qualifications (2021).
3. Stats NZ reported in 2013 that 38% of NZ have post-secondary qualifications (I haven't explored the 2023 data set yet - but it would have to have risen a significant amount to beat Ozs).
I haven't yet found any data to support your assertions, and you continue to fail to provide any.
The increase started after September 2022, when (of course) Labour were in office. I'm not blaming Labour, as the real culprit was the OCR being raised to 5.5%, and remaining at 5.5% for a total period of around 2 years. This is the "engineered recession" of Adrian Orr.
No as people back then could mark to market their losses directly against share prices, right now a lot of people still think they can get CV for there property.....
It was an instant hit to wealth back then, we knew those shares where never recovering. I graduated engineering in 1989, job market was bad, its bad for grads now as well, everyone wants 2 years experience...
Concur.
My boomer Dad sent me door-knocking for jobs in an industrial area in school holidays, and said I wasn't trying hard enough when I hadn't found a job after 2 weeks. 1 in 12 able people unemployed, and I was only available for 3 weeks even if I'd found work.
Note my Dad was given his job, and career (tradie), at 16. [Edit, I should note he got work for me at his job the next holidays].
It was also pretty bad in 2008/2009. My friends and I became unemployed mid 2008, and I was getting rebuffed with 100s of applicants for every position in a matter of days.
I believe in the UK a study was done, and the 1977-1982 cohort is the considerably poorer than those prior, as it is smaller, and was hit harder by the dotcom and GFC busts.
Yes, tough for young families with large debt.
But others have done well as capital rotated out of property and bonds into equities. I think equities have peaked now, and the next rotation is into commodities.
Trump will be putting tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper.
And if commodities take off in a bigger way than we have seen in recent years, inflation will return.
Which will make it even harder for those who bought property near the peak.
Yes, we hit zero rates under globalism, but if we’re shifting toward a mercantilist world, zero rates won’t be an option anymore, some people are going to get blindsided. You’re probably better off being under thirty with no debt than being over thirty drowning in it.
Not so sure about that. Family member in full time employment lost his job at 65 years of age. Yet to get full details but around 40 jobs dropped and not just in NZ. I thought he'd be immune as he was in logistics, shipping specifically. Private company with international branches here, Singapore and one or two other places.
Rising unemployment became inevitable when the sugar rush of irresponsibly large sums of too cheap borrowed money was injected into our small economy. Such an unbalanced situation was always going to need correcting once the flows of that cheap money, in the form of rising prices, began affecting everyone very badly (and, notably, our lower and middle income households the worst). There are other, longer term, hangovers too.
Whatever fix was applied to get the system back into some semblance of balance, was always going to be suboptimal - so I suggest we don't blame the nurse for applying iodine to our collective skinned knee, but rather direct our ire towards the other kid who pushed us over in the playground to begin with..
I was eating cooked lunches in the UK where you went along a line with your plate in 1973 but lets be clear you had to PAY for it and I didn't always get to have it, instead I went to school carrying a brown paper bag with a sandwich in it. Milk was also free every day. Providing free school lunches is a cop out, if you cannot afford to feed your kids you should no be having them in the first place. Don't give me the i'm too poor crap, my friend in the UK used to get tomato sauce sandwiches. You used to eat what you were given.
Damn, really highlights that we should stop welfare handouts to property in hard times eh, e.g. post floods or earthquakes. And subsidies to rental yields and prices, and RBNZ bailouts in hard times. If owners can't be bothered insuring and managing risk properly why should we normalise looking after them. Likewise, should probably re-look at universal pensions again...
Fact is, at least school lunches provide an excellent ROI in wealthy countries (2.5 - 7x ROI). Japan's success at using them to raise nutrition standards in society overall has also provided a great example of real Social Investment.
We're doing both:
- offering bare minimums to those in need (with "bare minimum" being a moving target). This is a good thing.
- creating an environment more conducive to generating more need.
The setup for children's foundations is wrong. Kids should be raised by a group of people. Failing that, you will need money to compensate. If you don't have enough money, the state can offer a really inferior version of what a peer group used to do, minus much in the way of compassion of genuine empathy, for free.
I do have a strong belief in personal responsibility. It feels like the more handouts we give, the more people come to expect it, and they get locked in a poverty trap, dependent on the state.
I am not necessarily anti free school lunches, but you do have to question why they are needed. Some families may genuinely not be able to afford a $1.20 loaf of bread and some spread, but it shouldn’t be half the country.
Just because it shouldn't be doesn't mean it isn't.
Whilst housing takes a disproportionate amount of people's incomes, that makes all other utilities squeeze on what remains for living costs such as clothes and food.
And over 50% of the country lives in rentals - meaning they are paying current market rates and not those of yesteryear or even nome at all - unlike the majority of, say, NZs largest group of welfare recipients - the 65+.
‘I do have a strong belief in personal responsibility. It feels like the more handouts we give, the more people come to expect it, and they get locked in a poverty trap, dependent on the state’
Great I agree - let’s cut all accommodation allowances immediately and see who starts complaining first. The person stuck in the poverty trap or the property investor who has purchased and over priced investment where the labour/income of our economy is not enough to pay the cash flows associated to that asset to justify the purchase price. Ie the government/tax payer has to pay accommodation supplements because rents are too high relative to our wages. And rents are too high because investors paid too much for their rentals. And every time we increase accommodation allowances to help and help those stuck in the poverty trap investors raise the rents accordingly then are willing to pay even more for overpriced rentals. It’s dumb dumb dumb!
While we are on school lunches. Didn't Labour provide gourmet lunches and DS had a look at this and came up with lunches considerably lower in price but just as nourishing. The more economic stuff about Labour that has come out in the last 6 months leads me to think they were profligate with taxpayers money.
https://www.reddit.com/r/auckland/
Swan on the menu too!
He’s a curious guy. He’s ‘progressive’ on transport but well right of centre on everything else
Could be a bit out of touch with poor people, comes across as moving in pretty privileged circles (all his peers earn good money and are sorted) and doesn't seem to understand that not everyone else is.
The bottom line with school lunches is that you can say parents should feed their kids but some don't.
Education is one of the best ways to get the kids of those parents to break the cycle, the state should be doing everything they can to break the cycle with education. Free education it self is pointless if the kids can't concentrate. School lunches are one of the most effective supporting measures, you can't learn shit on a hungry stomach (or eating the dog food Seymour has farmed out to his donors).
If you pay some of these parents extra in benefit it just goes on booze and c##p.
Better we pay for their kids lunches as we are feeding the kid and not the dropkick parent. And the kid might learn that school is a good place, with food and good people who care. They may actually learn better too.
School lunches are the best type of welfare benefit.
Equities were peaking when trump got in. There is little upside with rates and the dollar this strong.The Fed gave some relief to equities by holding fed funds at 4.5%. A cut now would have sent 10y towards 5%. This pause means it's going to take longer for US10Y to test 5%.
If tariffs strengthen the US dollar and we see the DXY above 110 then US equities will sell off.
We have the same unemployment as we did in 2017. We got lower unemployment after 2020 because for 2 years, on any given day, 1/4-1/8th of the workforce had to stay at home, if they or anyone in the house were sick, so businesses had to up headcounts to compensate.
Doesn't stop people from thinking we're currently experiencing the end of times but.
I am pretty confident that the unemployment rate will be 5% (+/- 0.1%). However, it is important to recognise what we are measuring here. The unemployment rate is the number of people out of work as a % of the active labour force. What has been happening is that more people are simply deciding not to look for work - to retire, look after kids etc. The number of people not in the active labour force has increased by around 90,000 in the last 2 years. This is suppressing the unemployment rate (same happens every recession btw).
So, watch the employment rate figure this week. We have negative job growth of around -2% so employment numbers will definitely be falling. I would expect an employment rate of about 67.4% - down from 69.8% at the peak. Now, remember that it will be 6 - 12 months before we get any real job growth. The big question is whether the job losses lead to another big fallback as consumer demand falls. I don't think that will happen, but we are not safe yet. Ironic that it is the mainly publicly funded jobs (health, care, education, public admin, water and utilities etc) that have kept the economy going over the last year.
We had zero unemployment in the 1950s and 1960s, and people seem to remember those as good times. If we had low unemployment it would lead to better utilisation of resources. People might employ more capital and less labour leading to increased productivity. We have a bad attitude of more hands to the pump rather than getting a better pump.
We should absolutely offer anyone who wants to work a basic living wage job - what kind of human society leaves willing workers idle while things need doing? If businesses can't tempt people away from those jobs with better pay / conditions, then they won't have any workers.
At 3% unemployment my local KFC had to close temporarily as no one wanted to do that job for $25 an hour. At 0% they would probably have to pay $100 an hour. If KFC pays $100 an hour, how much is my doctor who has been to university for 7 years going to want to be paid? $1000 an hour?
Under genuinely full employment, the market determines wage relativity. So, people doing the hard, messy, demoralising jobs get paid a lot more. This would mean takeaway food would get more expensive, and it would be cheaper for families to look after older people rather than stick them in grim retirement homes. Good.
The market already does this. Higher paying incomes usually come with a commensurate level of education, experience, and ability, of which there are fewer people. Hence the gritty manual stuff can in theory be done by literally any physically functioning human.
Your view also assumes that we're all roughly equitable in terms of output. You couldn't pay me money to hire some people. EDIT: actually if you paid me enough then I could be pursuaded.
The jobs that went unfilled when we had low unemployment were the ones where wage levels and working conditions were only viable because workers had no choice. A functional market for jobs/workers has a reasonable balance of power. Workers can walk out of jobs if they don't feel adequately rewarded, and employers can fire people who don't work out. Yes, this dynamic would lead to a compression of wage scales. It would also mean people being adequately rewarded for care work, cleaning hospitals, training etc. All Good.
If an employer cannot attract and retain staff by offering a living wage, decent terms and conditions, a positive work environment, etc, you fail. Good.
The market sets the price of what things cost to buy, and our lower wages lean towards jobs that serve the wider public.
Most care workers for instance are paid little, because most old people don't have the resources for more thorough care in a nicer facility with better paid staff.
So where do the resources come from to afford the higher pay?
Ultimately you'd need to enact something a lot closer to a command economy. Which resolves some issues with a more market oriented system, but usually comes with a bunch of new ones.
No. The market sets prices based on cost + margin. The size of the margin is determined by supply/demand (aka the market power of the seller). So, if we had full employment, employers would have to compete for care workers. This would lead to care workers' wages increasing, care workers' shifts becoming more regular and stable, travel time and fuel costs being fully paid between home visits etc. This would increase the cost of providing aged care services, and suppliers would have to increase their prices accordingly.
This same dynamic would play out across other service sectors and roles, and wage differentials and prices would adjust to the new market conditions. Higher prices would lead to lower demand for some things (hospo), and resources and consumer spending would shift to less discretionary products and services (care, health, etc). This is the free market doing it's thing! Hardly a command economy.
This is the free market doing it's thing! Hardly a command economy.
But you've had to pay people for a "job" the market currently doesn't require. How does that work, if not for some form of state involvement.
No. The market sets prices based on cost + margin. The size of the margin is determined by supply/demand (aka the market power of the seller). So, if we had full employment, employers would have to compete for care workers. This would lead to care workers' wages increasing, care workers' shifts becoming more regular and stable, travel time and fuel costs being fully paid between home visits etc. This would increase the cost of providing aged care services, and suppliers would have to increase their prices accordingly.
I'm not disputing that, I'm asking how that's paid for. If we stick with care workers:
- the government mandates full employment (and we still haven't established how, you'd be paying everyone to "work" irrespective of market demand)
- less competition forces up wages for currently in demand services (in this instance, aged care)
How do people who already can't afford a decent level of care service the larger costs?
Fair comments all. I would argue that 'the market' inludes the wants and desires of the population - we want pavements, parks, schools, police, social services, as well as restaurants, shops, holidays etc.
So, why not have some community activities and projects that get done when consumer demand is too low to sustain full employment? Why not offer jobs with a minimum set of terms and conditions to set a 'floor' instead of setting minimum wages etc? When the economy runs hot, the projects slow down or pause, when the economy slows, the projects get done. Feels like a better automatic stabiliser than unemployment, right? We did this for decades.
As for care costs, as I said earlier, they get resourced because other stuff doesn't get resourced. We have fewer people selling us crap we don't need and more people doing care work. This switch in how resources are used happens because of full employment, it happens because care work is paid appropriately.
Effectively though you're trying to create labour scarcity via artificial means.
Why would people leave their job doing some low yield, paid government scheme to be a care worker?
Why wouldn't you just tax consumption then (or things you deem unnecessary), and give that money to the unemployed? Because you're theory assumes people would rationally only spend money on essentials as costs get higher - this already doesn't happen.
If an employer cannot attract and retain staff by offering a living wage, decent terms and conditions, a positive work environment, etc, you fail.
Fail? I thought those employers declared a 'crisis' of sorts and lobbied for a 'public bailout' in the form of more immigration!
Great points in this thread Jfoe. Also, mass immigration (especially with residence attached) has allowed far too many jobs to be done for less than they deserve and distorted the supply/demand balance.
What kind of society purposefully skyrockets housing prices to unaffordable levels for FHB - rising multiple times for level of overall inflation, for years or decades, in order to create ‘growth’? And when it looks like the economy is tanking, it reverts to creating even more demand for these highly expensive houses meaning that private debt to GDP remains fixed at a dangerously high ratio? And we view this behaviour as the solution to our problems instead of viewing it as the problem itself.
It would, but it might also undo all the good work reinstating interest deductibility did.
So no, we'll welcome population growth. Even if there were no jobs or people here that are prepared to do them, immigration will still be popular provided there is a pathway to residency i.e. there will always be economic refugees prepared to buy a job here and many employers are in the business of selling residency (the job or work to do is a secondary consideration, eg Mansion-building firm charged worker thousands for job and sacked him a week later | RNZ News).
"Private sector average hourly earnings as recorded by Stats NZ's Quarterly Employment Survey (which is part of the suite of labour market measures to be released in the coming week) saw a peak increase of 8.5% in the year to September 2022.
As of September 2024 that annual figure was down to 3.2% and the RBNZ is forecasting a further fall - to 2.8% - for the 2024 calendar year. If the figure is in around that level, there'll be no concerns from the RBNZ."
How is even 2.8% achievable when per capita output is currently negative? Someone, somewhere, is losing out.
It's pretty straightforward. Private sector clear about $240bn in surplus per year. Worker salaries take up about $120bn of that, the rest goes to profit, mixed income, depreciation etc. In the last couple of years, the proportion of the surplus going to wages has increased a bit, profit share has reduced.
It's pretty straightforward. Private sector clear about $240bn in surplus per year. Worker salaries take up about $120bn of that
I'm ofay with P&L sheets but I'm struggling with this factoid you've mentioned before.
Is this sentence the same as saying businesses made a gross profit of $240b and labour is $120b? Or is "surplus" turnover?
Sorry, I'm talking national accounts. Business operational expenditure minus nonstaff operational costs (with a few adjustments) = total output. I lazily referred to this output as the 'surplus'.
Anyway, total output is around $240bn per year in NZ. This is basically shared between profits, wages, owner income (self-employed earnings) and depreciation. Employee compensation takes around $120bn. Profits are roughly $80bn.
Net profit?
Sorry, I'm just trying to make a picture, based on what I know about various' businesses labour costs as a relation to turnover, gross and net profits.
For instance, the lower the percentage of labour to turnover implies a business with a higher percentage of cost of goods, or capital. Or both.
Yeah, but not for every business.
E.g. my last employer in NZ made over 1000% revenue per staff member (mid-8 digits). Gotta love IT. But they were doing it tough also - not because the business sucked but because they'd been bought out by a US VC firm that put an expansionist CEO in, overpaid for another business to acquire a new market on leveraged debt, then interest rates rose and the group got squeezed.
AFAIK, almost 1/3rd of my team left for overseas last year, and weren't replaced. (BUT I'm also aware one who stayed frequents here, so its possible he may choose to correct me).
I'm going from memory here, but, yes, net profit was around $80bn during 2023 based on national accounts and corporate tax revenue data. It is a bit lower this year, but the data is not finalised. Important to remember that NZ businesses have the highest financial liabilities as % of GDP in the OECD (USA is in 2nd). The dividends have to be paid - so the profits have to be chunky.
5% my ass, we all know this number is not an accurate representation and is manipulated by criteria. Open r/newzealand or r/Auckland and there is daily suicidal, depression based posts because of 6-12 months of job applications and nothing, then the next post or comment is about just being laid off.
Unemployment kinda sucks, not just the money aspect, but also the feeling of rejection and feeling of less worth.
But internet comments may not be an accurate reflection of how little or much of something is going on in the wider world.
Just an analogue point of view anyway.
I struggle to believe the comments on the internet aren't a truer reflection. People don't explain their failures and struggles openly, whereas on Reddit, anonymous, it's all open air. The NZ subreddits are very depressing. It's very dark in NZ for many but it's easier, especially for boomers to act like all is merry.
There are a lot of IT contractors who are not working but not on the dole.
Sure a 6 month break is cool if you have just worked for 36 months, but not if you have a mortgage, not all contractors wanted to work that way. IMHO many of these skilled workers will be in Aussie very soon, dire prospects here.
Some idiot posted on here that the best will always do ok in NZ, sure but the best will do better offshore.
We are in terminal decline and all Willis wants to do is keep cutting until we return to surplus....
I want to put forward Orr for clown of the decade.
I struggle to believe the comments on the internet aren't a truer reflection
The problem is selection bias. You're assuming the average Reddit poster represents the average NZ worker. For a start, the average age of a Redditer is 23, when the average Kiwi is 38. Younger people are disproportionately effected in this employment environment.
It'd be like viewing a hunting forum and assuming because everyone there talks about killing animals for sport, then everyone must.
There is the Labour force participation rate which is 71.2% for the September quarter, with the December quarter released in two days
I am unemployed and am not in the stats. Had a couple of months of work pre summer. My friend has a temp horticultural job and when she was unemployed she was not counted.. Those that want jobs are underestimated. I am sick of high cost of living brought on by basically too many regulations and a lack of land supply. There will be no sustainable growth when we can't afford housing. We have one group of people who own, lease and rent to those who are meant to keep the country going. This owner group is too large and greedy. Property needs to halve in value to avoid economic collapse.
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