Understanding the current employer engagement with employee training can outline business types that have the potential to take on more apprentices. Overall, small and large businesses are roughly equally as likely to train apprentices. However, in the construction sector apprentices are supported more by smaller businesses. This may present an opportunity for large businesses in the construction sector to take on more apprentices.
Employer training engagement is where an employer will involve themselves in their employees’ apprenticeship training. Understanding the relationship between businesses and ITOs can provide insight for ITOs into the size and maturity of businesses that are directing their employees towards further training. This can outline opportunities for ITOs to engage more with certain business sizes and encourage them to provide more training opportunities for their employees. In addition, this information may also provide insight for businesses into gaps in their industry wide training efforts.
This report explores the relationship businesses have with ITOs, outlining their current efforts towards providing further training their employees.
We define a business’ size here by the number of people it employs. People who are self-employed with no employees will have a size of zero. The first chart below demonstrates the number of businesses in the trades by size and the second shows the number of employees by business size.
In terms of the number of entities that exist, most sectors are dominated by sole operators and small businesses. While, from the perspective of the number of employees, larger businesses (more than 20 employees) make up a larger share of each sector. The varying levels between sectors are likely due to the nature of the industry the business is in. For example, carpentry is dominated by small businesses while architectural aluminium has a higher proportion of larger businesses.
Methodology
The data is sourced from the IDI. Business information comes from the business register, this includes the industry and the region that the business operates in. The number of employees is determined from IRD tax records. An employee of a business in a given tax year is defined as someone who received wage or salary income from that business in that tax year.
Methodology
The data is sourced from the IDI. Business information comes from the business register, this includes the industry and the region that the business operates in. The number of employees is determined from IRD tax records. An employee of a business in a given tax year is defined as someone who received wage or salary income from that business in that tax year.
The percentage of employers engaged with ITOs is calculated by whether the business has had an employee in ITO training in the previous five years, including those enrolled with the relevant ITO for the sector
The percentage of employers that are engaged with the ITO training system increases with business size, as shown in the chart below. This is to be expected as the larger businesses have more employees so are therefore more likely to have one engaged with ITO training. The percentage of employers that are engaged with their employees’ training has been increasing over time, particularly in large businesses.
Methodology
The data is sourced from the IDI. Business information comes from the business register, this includes the industry and the region that the business operates in. The number of employees is determined from IRD tax records. An employee of a business in a given tax year is defined as someone who received wage or salary income from that business in that tax year.
Businesses are considered to be engaged with ITOs if they have had an employee start or successfully finish an ITO qualification in the previous five years.
To control for the fact that larger businesses are more likely to have an employee engaged in training, the percentage of employees engaged in training in a business can be used instead. This will, therefore, consider the number of employees engaged in training within a business.
On aggregate, the percentage of employees recently in training does not vary much by business size until businesses have more than 100 employees. There is a slight dip for businesses with more than 20 employees. However, between industries, there are some significant differences. For example, construction equipment hire trainees are mostly engaged with large businesses while the carpentry sector has higher engagement with small businesses.
Methodology
The data is sourced from the IDI. Business information comes from the business register, this includes the industry and the region that the business operates in. The number of employees is determined from IRD tax records. An employee of a business in a given tax year is defined as someone who received wage or salary income from that business in that tax year.
An employee is considered to have recently been in training if they started or successfully finished an ITO qualification in the previous five years.
Access to the data used in this study was provided by Stats NZ under conditions designed to give effect to the security and confidentiality provisions of the Data and Statistics Act 2022. The results presented in this study are the work of the author, not Stats NZ or individual data suppliers.
These results are not official statistics. They have been created for research purposes from the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) which is carefully managed by Stats NZ. For more information about the IDI please visit https://www.stats.govt.nz/integrated-data/.
The results are based in part on tax data supplied by Inland Revenue to Stats NZ under the Tax Administration Act 1994 for statistical purposes. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the IDI for statistical purposes, and is not related to the data's ability to support Inland Revenue's core operational requirements.
