The minimum wage is set to increase by $1.50 an hour with the government saying the impact on inflation will be “negligible”.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced the move to a new rate of $22.70 per hour from 1 April as part of a raft of changes as the government resets its agenda heading into the general election in October.<\/p>\n
The Starting-Out and Training minimum wage rates will be maintained at 80 percent of the adult minimum wage.<\/p>\n
“I do understand that a number of small businesses will have concerns about this decision, however in a cost of living crisis we can’t leave those on the lowest incomes behind,” Hipkins said at his post-Cabinet media briefing.<\/p>\n
“An inflation-adjusted lift to the minimum wage will mean that thousands of New Zealanders don’t go backwards.”<\/p>\n
He said past experiences with minimum wage increases showed people were unlikely to lose their jobs as a result.<\/p>\n
“Those concerns have been raised every time the minimum wage has been increased and we’ve got record low unemployment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The minimum wage is set to increase by $1.50 an hour with the government saying the impact on inflation will be “negligible”. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced the move to a new rate of $22.70 per hour from 1 April as part of a raft of changes as the government resets its agenda heading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2893,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions\/2893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}