Intake of new entrants peaked in 2007 for the construction industry. After the global financial crisis in 2009, intakes fell to half their pre-crisis levels. Since 2009 the construction industry has seen a steady growth in new entrants.
On the other hand the dairy farming sector saw growth in new entrants into 2008, however fell over the 2008/2009 season when dairy payouts fell. A similar shock is seen in the 2014/15 season when dairy payouts fell again.
New entrants are defined as workers first starting work in a given sector. We limit our new entrants to those working a full time equivalent for at least three months. This is done in an attempt to remove casual workers who have no intention of remaining in the workforce. Workforce numbers found in IRD records are often higher than other sources due to the inability to separate the workforce from its support and administration services.
Sectors within industries can be investigated by expanding the selector on the right (▶).
Methodology
A new entrant is classified as an individual who first starts working (earning income in IRD records) within a given sector (defined through employer ANZSIC 2006 codes). We take new entrants in the sectors we follow between the years of 2007 and 2017.
Within IRD data there is no available information on the number of hours worked, only income at a monthly level. Because of this, we only consider an employee to be employed in a given month if they earn more than the equivalent of 0.5 FTE (80 hours) on the minimum wage. Thus for 2007 (minimum wage of $11.25) only months with income over $900 count as employed.
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.
