Job listings on internet auction site Trade Me are up 25 per cent on a year ago, with growth particularly strong in Southland and Gisborne.

The Government is being accused of taking a slash and burn approach to spending after Finance Minister Bill English signalled cuts to public services and new figures showed substantial job losses in the sector.

Subsidies and job loss cover scheme will continue for two extra weeks.

More than 200 workers laid off from a Christchurch textile plant may not qualify for help through the Government's earthquake assistance package.

The New Zealand dollar may extend its losses this week as the cost of the Christchurch earthquake becomes clearer.

Mothers with young babies and sick and disabled people on benefits would be forced to look for work under a proposed overhaul of NZ's welfare system, which would see all benefits replaced by a 'jobseeker payment'.

Prime Minister John Key says he is open to work-testing beneficiaries when their youngest child turns three.

Peter Milne has one question for a government advisory group that wants more beneficiaries to have to look for work: Where are the jobs?

The Government won't consider reductions to main benefit levels including the sickness, invalid's, unemployment and domestic purposes benefits as part of any welfare overhaul recommended by the Welfare Working Group tomorrow.

Secure job, training, no student loan, chance to see the world, how could any parent object?

About 300,000 welfare beneficiaries who are judged capable of work will face a day of reckoning tomorrow with the release of a report.

John Key has been accused of being disconnected after saying that beneficiaries who resort to food banks do so out of their own "poor choices".

John Key says beneficiaries who resort to food banks do so out of their own "poor choices" rather than because they cannot afford food.