Deborah Coddington: Job shock! Most workers feeling fine

Misery loves company in the New Zealand media right now. When the news isn't telling us everything we don't need to know about the latest stabbing or gang-related fracas, it's bombarding us with increasingly frenzied reports about the financial crisis.

It's not as if reporters are interviewing their computers - we all know what's happened to the banking industry, and manufacturing is in dire straits. This is not good.

But last week, as if to rub salt into our wounds, the media headlined two survey results in such a way you'd be forgiven for thinking Armageddon has arrived. "One in five New Zealanders fear they'll lose their jobs" (or similar wording) shrilled the papers.

The New Zealand Council for Sustainable Business Development commissioned an online survey of 2852 Kiwis and found - shock, horror - that 570 are scared they'll get the sack before year's end.

This is meaningless. All it tells us is that a small proportion of workers worry about job security. It doesn't follow that this state of mind is caused by a bad economy, because we can't compare the result with a survey taken when times were good.

In the council's press release, chief executive Peter Neilson states: "The level of concern over job loss is running more than twice as high as the forecast unemployment rate of 7 per cent by the end of this year. This may be having a chilling effect on investment and spending."

Hold hard. How can we take the results of a survey which purports to show 19 per cent of workers fear they'll be unemployed, then say that's more than twice what Treasury predicts will be our official unemployment rate, therefore investment and spending (by whom, we are not told) is near-frozen?

It doesn't make any sense and, of course, that is not the point.

The point of press releases like this, gobbled up by some individuals in the business media and regurgitated almost word for word, was to raise the profile of a lobby group ahead of last Friday's summit on employment.

It takes a renegade in these cynical and negative times to look at a survey like this and see the glass half-full.

For instance, is it not good news that most of the people surveyed were happy they'd keep their jobs? To me, that's a marvellous result, as is the result of another survey done by Business New Zealand (which I presume is also for "sustainable development", since without sustainability, there would be no business). Of 647 businesses questioned, only one-third - just over 200 - reckoned they were overstaffed and might have to lay off workers or get them to agree to shorter hours.

But did we hear this as positive news? Oh no. Juxtaposed with the Council for Sustainable Development's survey, it was delivered in such a way as to scare the bejesus out of workers.

One-third of workers will be laid off, one-fifth of workers lie awake at night worrying about it, the sky is falling, the ship's going down and we're all going to die in here.

To be fair, parts of Neilson's press release were relatively upbeat.

Maybe journalists didn't bother reading through to the end, where he concluded: "I think we need to be positive about the future. Most of New Zealand's banking sector has a double-A rating and should be able to continue borrowing and lending. When the upturn comes New Zealand has to be ready with the skills, market and product development to take advantage of the upturn."

And despite the weariness with which we view yet another talkfest, the jobs summit was a good move.

Too early yet to judge its success, but at least Stock Exchange chairman Mark Weldon, a positive person who cops an unfair amount of criticism, got off his butt and herded a bunch of disparate organisations and individuals into one room to nut out solutions.

I didn't attend - too busy minding the vineyard, which contributes a fair whack to local employment - but I hope someone in the crowd killed the popular myth that market capitalism is the cause of all this mess.

Materialism is the culprit; by definition, a doctrine that denies spiritualism and is devoted exclusively to amassing material riches. Capitalists aren't ruled by their assets; they don't measure their personal success by the levels of envy their brazen displays can generate in onlookers.

I've only met one true capitalist - Christchurch's Dave Henderson - never too ashamed to drive along the road in a beat-up old car.

Materialists might think they've gained the world, but they lose their souls. Capitalists might lose their worlds, but with souls intact, they hunker down with their optimism and start anew.

When misery calls for company, materialists respond, and go running to the state for help.