Shanella Rajanayagam and Nicholas Warmke
National Accounts Unit & Development, Environment, Satellites and Strategy Unit
Statistics New Zealand
P O Box 2922, Wellington, New Zealand

info@stats.govt.nz 

Abstract

Analysing labour productivity levels is important because it can help improve our understanding of New Zealand’s productivity performance relative to other countries (notably Australia). In this paper, we use Statistics NZ’s recently released information on levels of labour hours paid to carry out a shift-share analysis. Shift-share analysis enables us to recognise the shifts in employment among industries that have different levels of labour productivity. As the movement of resources (specifically labour) from low productivity to high productivity industries directly affects a nation’s average productivity level, recognising these shifts is important to help explain the income gap with Australia. The results show that historically, New Zealand has been directing resources toward lower productive industries, and only in recent years have we begun to change our economic structure in a way that is conducive for overall productivity growth.

 Can We Level the Playing Field? A comparative analysis of the levels of labour productivity between industries in New Zealand (PDF, 15 pages, 588 kb)