Government pays out just shy of $10b to support 1.6 million in work

Friday, 17 April 2020

The Government has paid out $9.9 billion in wage subsidies to help employers pay 1.6 million staff since the wage subsidy scheme was introduced on March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson has said in an update on the scheme.

That was up from the $6.6b that had been claimed to help pay just under 1.1 million staff and self-employed on April 7.

The Treasury had estimated that a total of $12b could be claimed in subsidies when the scheme was last tweeked on March 27.

The goal of the pay-outs is to help employers keep staff on their books.

But on April 7, Robertson tipped the final figure would come in at between $9b and $10b, with claims made for about 60 per cent of the total workforce of 2.6 million.

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Given the public sector employs about 400,000 people, the proportion of private sector employees and self-employed covered by the subsidies may have exceeded 70 per cent.

The subsidies pay a fixed sum of $7029 per full-time worker and $4200 per part-time worker, and are open to businesses – including the self-employed and sole traders – who experience or forecast a revenue drop of 30 per cent in any one month between January and June as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The goal of the scheme is to help businesses hang on to staff through the downturn, rather than make them redundant.