Working Long Hours in New Zealand: A Profile of Long Hours Workers Using Data From The 2006 Census
LONG HOURS AND INDUSTRY
Key question
Are there clusters of long hours workers in particular industries?
Industries with both high numbers and high proportions of long hours workers are agriculture and road transport. High numbers of long hours workers are also found in professional, scientific and technical services, preschool and school education, and construction services.
If working hours were similar across industries, industries that employed the largest numbers of people should also contain relatively large numbers of long hours workers, with the proportions of long hours workers being relatively constant across industries. However, this was not the case across a number of key industry groups. An analysis of long hours workers by industry found that workers in various mining industries, “road transport”, “fishing, hunting and trapping”, “heavy and civil engineering construction”, “agriculture”, “oil and gas extraction” and “other transport” were significantly more likely to work long hours. However, as with occupation, as the numbers working in some of these industries are small, these were not automatically the industries with the greatest numbers of long hours workers. For example, while “non-metallic mineral mining and quarrying” had the highest proportion of long hours workers (59.27% of workers in this industry reported working long hours), only 1,650 people report working in this industry, and as such, only 978 people working long hours are in this industry. By contrast, only 21.52% of those working in the “professional, scientific and technical services (except computer systems design and related services)” reported working long hours, but this represented the second largest group of long hours workers, with 27,072 people reporting working long hours in this industry.
As such, in order to find clusters of long hours workers by industry, industries were identified where both the proportion and absolute numbers of long hours workers were high. The industries that stood out in this regard were agriculture (where 44.63% of workers or 45,795 people reported working 50 or more hours a week) and road transport (where 50.54% of workers or 15,438 people reported working long hours). These two industries had disproportionate numbers of long hours workers: workers in agriculture make up 11.02% of those working long hours, but only 5.6% of all workers, while workers in road transport are 3.71% of long hours workers, but only 1.67% of all workers.
Other industries with high numbers of long hours workers were preschool and school education (with 28.92% or 25,500 people working long hours) and construction services (with 27.01% or 21,672 people working long hours). A full breakdown of working hours by industry is contained in Appendix 1.
When considering long hours workers as a group, 11.02% of all those working 50 or more hours a week worked in agriculture (and were 5.6% of all workers), 6.51% worked in professional, scientific and technical services (and were 6.87% of all workers), 6.14% worked in preschool and school education (and were 4.81% of all workers), 5.21% worked in construction services (and were 4.38% of all workers), and 3.71% worked in road transport (and were 1.67% of all workers).