Female Labour Market Factsheet – December 2007

08 February 2008

This factsheet reports key female labour market information for the year to December 2007.  All data are sourced from the Household Labour Force Survey released by Statistics New Zealand.  Detailed gender data is not seasonally adjusted and so all figures are averaged over a year to reduce seasonal variation and sample error.

Summary of the female labour market for the year to December 2007

Long description for Female Labour Market Summary

Participation

The participation rate for females was 61.9% for the year to December 2007.  This is the highest participation rate recorded since the Household Labour Force Survey begun in 1986 and is higher than the 57.6% in the year to December 1999.  The female participation rate is below the national annual average participation rate of 68.6%.

Employment         

Employment growth for females has been high at 2.6% per annum on average since December 1999, and 2.1% for the year to December 2007.  This expansion in employment was higher than the economy-wide average of 2.4% since 1999 but lower than the average of 1.8% for the year to December 2007.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate for females was 3.9% for the year to December 2007.  This is less than the previous 19-year low of 4.0% recorded for the year to December 2005, and is down from the 6.5% measured for the year to December 1999.  The female unemployment rate remains higher than the overall annual average rate (3.6%).

Ethnicity

The female participation rate was highest for European women (63.1%), followed by Maori women (61.9%) and Pacific women (57.1%) for the year to December 2007.  Maori and Pacific women have enjoyed a larger than average fall in the unemployment rate over the last eight years when compared to other ethnicities falling to 8.4% and 8.2% respectively.  However, the unemployment rates for Maori and Pacific women still remain well above the annual average rate for all females of 3.9%. 

Age

Female participation rates are lower than male rates for nearly all age groups but the difference is particularly pronounced for women in their late 20s and 30s.  The participation rate of women of main childbearing age (25-39) has risen in the last eight years from 69.8% for the year to December 1999 to 73.0% for the year to December 2007.  This compares to a participation rate of 92.4% for males of the same age.