Older Workers Labour Market Factsheet – December 2007

08 February 2008

This factsheet reports key labour market information for older workers for the year to December 2007.  All data are sourced from the Household Labour Force Survey released by Statistics New Zealand.  Age data are not seasonally adjusted and so all figures are averaged over a year to reduce seasonal variation and sample error.  For the purposes of this factsheet, older workers refer to those aged 55 years and over.

Summary of the older workers labour market for the year to December 2007

Long description for Older Workers Labour Market Summary

Participation  

The participation rate for older workers rose slightly since the same time last year reaching 41.8% for the year to December 2007.  This is higher than the 40.4% recorded for the year to December 2006 and up strongly from 30.2% for the year to December 1999.  While the participation rate for older workers is still below the national annual average participation rate of 68.6%, the increase in older workers participation since 1999 is much larger than that for the general population.  Participation rates are lower for older workers than for the working age population as a whole as a large proportion of people in this age group are retired.

Employment  

Employment growth for older workers has been extremely high at 7.5% per annum on average since December 1999, and 6.9% for the year to December 2007.  This expansion in employment is higher than the economy-wide average of 2.4% (since 1999) and 1.6% (year to December 2007).  Older workers have accounted for 44% of the total increase in employment since December 1999.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate for older workers fell to 1.4% for the year to December 2007.  This is down from 2.0% recorded for the year to December 2006 and 4.5% for the year to December 1999.  The unemployment rate for older workers remains well below the annual average rate for all persons (3.6%).

Females       

The participation rate for female older workers was 34.3% for the year to December 2007, considerably lower than the rate for male older workers (50.1%).  However, since 1999, the participation rate for females has been increasing at a faster rate than for males.  For the year to December 1999 the participation rate for female older workers was only 22.5% while the male older worker participation rate was 39.0%