A Salvation Army report reveals the much-vaunted economic recovery is painfully uneven, with young people, Māori and Pasifika left behind. This is the story of just one struggling family. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is hailing New Zealand s relatively strong job market as the “envy of many countries”. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 per cent in the December 2020 quarter, down from a Covid lockdown-driven peak of 5.3 per cent three months earlier. But that s not what Salvation Army social workers are seeing out on the street, according to the welfare organisation s state of the nation report published this morning. It s not what Dave Letele and his team at BBM Motivation in south and west Auckland are seeing. And it s certainly not what unemployed father-of-eight Ray Milovale is seeing.