Pacific Peoples Labour Market Factsheet – December 2007

08 February 2008

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

Summary of the Pacific Peoples labour market for the year to December 2007

Long description for Pacific Peoples Labour Market Summary

Participation

The participation rate for Pacific peoples stood at 64.1% for the year to December 2007.  This is higher than the 62.3% recorded in year to December 2006 and the 60.6% measured for the year to December 1999.  The Pacific participation rate is below the national annual average participation rate of 68.6%.

Employment

Employment growth for Pacific peoples has been high at 3.3% per annum on average since December 1999, however employment declined by -1.0% for the year to December 2007.  The expansion in Pacific peoples’ employment since 1999 is higher than the economy-wide average of 2.4% but over the last year has contrasted economy wide growth of 1.8%.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate for Pacific peoples rose slightly in the year to December 2007 to 6.5%, up from 6.4% in December 2006 but is down from 13.6% for the year to December 1999.  The (percentage point) fall in the Pacific unemployment rate since 1999 was greater than the fall for European but less than the fall for Maori.  While the Pacific unemployment rate remains above the annual average rate for all persons (3.6%), it is lower than the rate for Maori (7.7%).

Females

The Pacific female participation rate was 57.1% for the year to December 2007, below that of Maori and European ethnicities.  However, Pacific women have enjoyed a larger than average fall in the unemployment rate over the last eight years falling from 13.5% to 8.2%.  Nonetheless, the unemployment rate for Pacific females still remains above the average for all females of 3.9%. 

Youth

The unemployment rate for Pacific youth aged 15-24 remained high in the year to December 2007 at 14.5%. This is up from the 12.9% recorded a year earlier, but is considerably less than 18.0% for the year to December 2000.  Unemployment rates for Pacific youth are still higher than for all 15-24 year olds (9.8%).